Delivering surgical education: a specialist surgical society and undergraduate student collaboration.

Abstract

Currently, the delivery of the undergraduate medical curriculum includes various teaching, learning and assessment strategies. Self-directed learning is an important aspect of this mix and includes the use of resources, sometimes not provided by the parent University, in the student's own time to enhance the student's knowledge, skills and professional practice. Societies aimed at a particular specialty contain a pool of professionals that can provide undergraduate students with opportunities for further self-directed learning, development of specialty-specific core skills and exploration of research interests. This may then enhance and enlighten the students' approach to a particular orthopaedic problem and reinforce the curriculum they are studying while providing an understanding of current areas of debate that are not part of the curriculum at present. The collaboration of postgraduate societies with undergraduate students in developing and implementing undergraduate engagement strategies is of benefit to undergraduate education, the specialty society and the collaborating students. We explore the planning and implementation of an interactive webinar series run by the British Indian Orthopaedic Society in collaboration with undergraduate students. We provide a case study of a surgical specialty society engaging with undergraduate students with synergistic effect. We pay particular attention to the benefits accrued by the specialty society and the student collaborators by this joint effort.