Medical students turn tutor to boost future medics' knowledge of rheumatology
MEDICAL students at Glasgow University are learning teaching methods to help them become tutors in an innovative attempt to improve fellow students' knowledge of rheumatology.
Forty fourth and fifth year medical students will become tutors and will teach their third year peers about examination of the musculoskeletal system. This will be in addition to their present teaching, and is aimed to benefit tutors and trainees alike.
It is the first time that peer assisted learning has been put into practice in the area of clinical skills in medical schools in the UK.
The initiative is to be funded by a £58,000 grant from the Arthritis Research Campaign to support the appointment of a senior allied health professional, to help set up and deliver the project.
A survey of current undergraduate teaching in the UK, carried out by arc three years ago, found that rheumatology was losing its status as a core specialty in some curricula, and that in five medical schools, half of the students received no clinical rheumatology training at all.
With the projected increase in the number of older people by 25 per cent in the next 15 years, and therefore more musculoskeletal disease, this is seen as especially worrying. Currently one in five GP consultations are arthritis-related.
"There is concern that qualified doctors should know more about the musculoskeletal system and its diseases, so we are trying to make a concerted effort to boost training for undergraduate medical students, explained Dr Max Field, senior lecturer and consultant rheumatologist at Glasgow University, who will lead the project.
"We want to stimulate them to take an active interest in rheumatology, and maybe go on to specialise in this important and increasingly relevant clinical area."
The scheme is likely to start in the next academic year. The initiative could easily be taken up by medical schools around the UK.
