Gregory Landon
St. Mary’s Hospital, UK
Title: Establishing a teaching programme for medical students delivered by junior doctors: a quality improvement project
Biography
Biography: Gregory Landon
Abstract
Aim: To establish a formal teaching programme delivered by junior doctors, teaching medical students on placement in the paediatrics department of a district general hospital in London, by using plan do study act (PDSA) cycles.
Method: A lesson plan was devised to teach the chosen topic (newborn baby check). The teaching session was delivered by paediatric senior house officers to medical students on rotation in the paediatrics department. Feedback (quantative and qualitative) was sought after each session, from both the students and teachers. Ideas for improvements to the lesson plan were generated based on feedback from previous sessions. The teaching session was then run again with the next group of medical students, following the amended lesson plan. A total of seven PDSA cycles were run, with different junior doctors contributing to different teaching sessions.
Results: An average of five medical students attended each teaching session. Quantitative feedback was sought across three domains, using a Likert scale 1-9. The first session’s mean score was 8.6 in appropriateness to learning needs, 8.6 in quality of teaching and 8.8 in level of interaction. Scores improved across the cycles in the fifth and sixth sessions, maximum scores of 9.0 were achieved in all 3 domains. In the seventh cycle, mean scores fell to 8.75 across all domains.
Discussion: By acting on feedback from both students and teachers, the lesson plan was improved over the first few PDSA cycles. Not all changes made resulted in improvement, resulting in lower feedback scores in the seventh cycle.