Organising taster sessions in plastic surgery for school pupils
BMJ 2005; 330 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.330.7486.s58 (Published 05 February 2005) Cite this as: BMJ 2005;330:s58
Abstract
Beryl De Souza and colleagues outline how her department organised a successful scheme to give senior school pupils from non-medical backgrounds a chance to experience the world of medicine
Medical school applicants
In a new report, The Demography of Medical Schools: a discussion paper, the BMA reveals that six in ten (59%) medical school applicants come from professional backgrounds.1 It also reports that admissions procedures can unintentionally favour certain social groups and that the social imbalance among medical students cannot be fully accounted for by different levels of educational achievement. Some admissions procedures can favour certain social groups by preferring candidates to have work experience in a hospital. However, for many students access to such opportunities is limited.1
Targeting local students
The aim of our project was to introduce students from non-privileged backgrounds to the world of medicine.
Box 1: Results of our student satisfaction survey
Did you find the three day attachment useful? All students found the attachment useful to give an understanding about hospital medicine, doctor-patient interactions, and the work of a junior doctor.
What did you enjoy most? Observing minor surgical procedures was the most popular schedule in the timetable. This was followed by sitting in on clinics, speaking to patients, and shadowing junior doctors.
Would you recommend this attachment to other students who are interested in pursuing medicine as a career?
All recommended the attachment as giving good insight into medicine and helping in their decision making of whether to pursue a career in medicine. The students also enjoyed seeing the variety and complexity of cases in plastic surgery.
The plastic surgery department at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, has always received requests for students from local schools to visit our unit. We decided to give local sixth formers (senior school pupils) and college students a taste of medical life in our unit. We designed a timetable which allowed sixth formers to shadow a junior doctor, attending ward rounds, an outpatient clinic, minor operations, dressing clinics, and teaching sessions.
Planning and organisation
We started by approaching the schools liaison project officers at Queen Mary College, University of London, for a list of local sixth formers and colleges.
The training and development department in our hospital provided us with the legal requirements for having such visitors. These consisted of an occupational health questionnaire, an application form for medical work experience observations, and a work agreement form.
Our next step was to send a standard letter out to all local schools and colleges. We then developed a list of interested schools with names of students and set about allocating them into the timetable we had developed. This meant that half terms and Easter and summer holidays were busy times in our department.
We were inundated with requests to attend our taster session and relied on the schools to select students to visit our unit.
Our programme
We accommodated 25 students (aged 16-17 years) from non-medical backgrounds over an 18 month period. Twelve were Asian, seven were Afro-Caribbean, and six were white.
As their day started at 8 am the students were quite worn out by 4 pm. They were allowed to visit the hospital museum and sit in the occupational therapy sessions and observe patients having rehabilitation exercises. They were also allowed to use the department library and to look at our textbooks and journals.
We were able to give students an opportunity to experience medicine in both the elective and trauma situation. In particular, our hand clinics were popular with the students, as were our minor operation day surgery sessions. The patients did not seem to mind when asked if a potential medical student could sit in on their clinic visit or minor operation.
The students also received encouragement and guidance from junior doctors in the department.
Advantages
Benefits of the programme included some funding for our department from the schools liaison project board. We used this towards training facilities and cultivating teaching, mentoring, and management skills in junior doctors
As well as demonstrating the multidisciplinary teamwork needed to care for patients, we felt it was also an opportunity to help dispel the myth about plastic surgery being merely cosmetic surgery and show students the diversity of the specialty.
Box 2: Ten key steps to setting up your department for potential medical students
Enlist help from your secretaries, ward staff, clinic staff, theatre staff, and junior doctors.
Get a list of local schools and colleges from the schools liaison department at your local university.
Inquire about getting funding for your department.
Get and review all the legal requirements documentation from your hospital's training and development department.
Design your timetable with help from all the juniors who will be concerned with looking after the students.
Send letters with suitable time periods to the schools and colleges with the required legal forms. Have a nominated junior registrar and senior house officer to deal with the subsequent administration.
Make sure that everyone concerned knows what happens after forms are filled in and where they should be sent.
Confirm that students will be attending or slots will be wasted.
Treat the students well (as the care they receive during their attachment may influence their decision to study medicine).
Ask for feedback forms to be filled in so that the timetable can be tailored accordingly.
Also, although the doctors on the team felt they had the added task of looking after the students, it was quite flattering for them to have a student following them around in awe of their every word and action.⇓
Disadvantages
The main disadvantage was all the paperwork necessary for each student. Our departmental secretaries were inundated with calls from schools, colleges, and students, which created more work. The response from the local schools and colleges was so overwhelming we could not accommodate everyone in our small department. We resolved this by asking the schools and colleges to award places for the taster session by in-house competition.
Teaching students with minimal medical knowledge required some effort. On occasions the reactions or comments of the students to patients or situations were inappropriate. This was seen as an opportunity to educate or advise the student. Students were not allowed to attend main theatres, children's wards, or the accident and emergency department.
Several students fainted or felt unwell during the three day period. This may have been because they were in an unfamiliar, hectic environment as well as being exposed to the emotions of patients and doctors or to gruesome surgical sights.
Although a doctor was always available to look after and chaperone the students, we realised that this might have been a problem during the holiday period, when many students wanted to attend our unit.
Valuable experience
The students were asked to fill in a satisfaction survey at the end of their attachment to our unit (box 1). This revealed the taster session to be valuable in making decisions about medicine as a career.
Of the 25 students who attended, 14 applied to study medicine, seven applied for biomedical subjects, two for dentistry, one for engineering, and one for law.
Overall, we feel our experience has shown that this is a worthwhile exercise and we encourage other departments to set up similar projects (box 2).