Can medical students teach? A near-peer-led teaching program for year 1 students

Abstract

The General Medical Council states that United Kingdom graduates must function effectively as educators. There is a growing body of evidence showing that medical students can be included as teachers within a medical curriculum. Our aim was to design and implement a near-peer-led teaching program in an undergraduate medical curriculum and assess its acceptability among year 1 students. Students received six tutorials focusing on aspects of cardiac, respiratory, and blood physiology. Tutorials ran alongside standard module teaching. Students were taught in groups of ~30 students/group, and an active teaching approach was used in sessions where possible. Using anonymous evaluations, student feedback was collected for the program overall and for each tutorial. The program was voluntary and open to all first-year students, and 94 (of 138) medical students from year 1 at Brighton and Sussex Medical School were recruited to the study. The tutorial program was popular among students and was well attended throughout. Individual tutorial and overall program quantitative and qualitative feedback showed that students found the tutorials very useful in consolidating material taught within the module. Students found the small group and active teaching style of the near-peer tutors very useful to facilitating their learning experience. The end-of-module written examination scores suggest that the tutorials may have had a positive effect on student outcome compared with previous student attainment. In conclusion, the present study shows that a near-peer tutorial program can be successfully integrated into a teaching curriculum. The feedback demonstrates that year 1 students are both receptive and find the additional teaching of benefit.

The Efficacy of Frontline Near‐Peer Teaching in a Modern Medical Curriculum

“…Near‐peer teaching has been used in health sciences and medicine (Krych et al, ; Nieder et al, ; Gill et al, ) to supplement the delivery of complex topics (Krych et al, ; Gill et al, ). In medicine, NPT has been used to deliver a wide range of subjects including cardiopulmonary resuscitation (Hughes et al, ), communication skills (Nestel and Kidd, ), physiology (Jackson and Evans, ), radiology (Naeger et al, ) and anatomy (Ocel et al, ; Hall et al, ; Dickman et al, ).…”

How does attending PowerPoint free peer to peer teaching impact student experiences at medical school?

“…Supporting staff to develop alternative teaching methods would be in keeping with "flipped classroom" initiatives (Prober and Khan 2013). Furthermore, students are an underutilised resource that could provide high quality, individualised teaching within medical school curricula (Jackson and Evans 2012). This would not only be a very cost-effective way to provide small group learning but would enable senior students to develop skills in teaching that will be essential for their future roles as doctors (Ten Cate and Durning 2007b …”

Ten considerations for implementing effective and sustainable near-peer teaching in clinical anatomy education

“…It is highly probable that the sensitivity of distance along the NPT spectrum may vary from discipline to discipline, making it difficult to define an optimum distance. If there is too much congruence, (as with peer rather than near peer teaching), the teaching becomes more collaborative in nature (Jackson and Evans, 2012). Furthermore, there is also evidence of tension and competitiveness when students are involved in teaching their own cohort (Parton et al, 2017).…”