Abstract
Modern health care provision is now fundamentally evidence based, meaning competency in academic medicine is integral to medical training. The Integrated Academic Training pathway provides focussed training in this area at a postgraduate level but no such provision exists at an undergraduate level. A number of peer-led academic societies have emerged across the UK to provide education and support for undergraduates but there is little evidence about the type of peer-led interventions that are effective. We report here the findings of one such peer-led organization, the Warwick Academic Medicine Society. We found that traditional educational interventions, including didactic lectures and small-group teaching, are effective at inspiring students regarding academic medicine but poor at translating this enthusiasm into sustained involvement in research. We find this disparity to be centred on misconceptions amongst students regarding the time and skills required to meaningfully contribute to a research project. Further, we introduce the concept of the Live Research Demonstration (LRD), a novel peer-led educational intervention which aims to address these misconceptions and improve involvement of students in research. Initial pilots of the LRD concept have shown significant promise and we recommend a larger trial across multiple localities to confirm its educational benefits.
Highlights
Competency in academic medicine has emerged as a vital component of effective health care delivery, but few clinicians have had formal training in its core principles of critical appraisal and research
We report here the initial observations developed at one INSPIRE-funded student organization, Warwick Academic Medicine Society (WAcMS), and how this led to the development of a novel educational tool aimed at improving engagement with academic medicine in the coming years
The first 2 years of operation of WAcMS have highlighted that student-led research societies can be very beneficial in promoting academic medicine amongst medical students
Summary
Competency in academic medicine has emerged as a vital component of effective health care delivery, but few clinicians have had formal training in its core principles of critical appraisal and research. The introduction of the National Institute for Health Research-funded Integrated Clinical Academic Training (IAT) pathway in the UK has gone some way towards improving the situation at a postgraduate level, but there is currently no provision in this programme for medical students. This has been recognized by the Academy of Medical Sciences, who have been sponsoring interventions to boost student research aspirations through its Wellcome Trust-funded INSPIRE programme since 2013. We report here the initial observations developed at one INSPIRE-funded student organization, Warwick Academic Medicine Society (WAcMS), and how this led to the development of a novel educational tool aimed at improving engagement with academic medicine in the coming years
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