Aims
A campaign to promote undergraduate education and training in a central London teaching hospital, aiming to improve engagement in teaching and learning for students and staff.
Methods
The ‘Teach me’ campaign is a novel approach to enhancing undergraduate education in a department or clinical area, brought about due to feedback given by students. We created a multi-modal promotion campaign aimed at students (n=13), patients and clinicians of all disciplines, undertaken on the respiratory ward for 1 week.
The various methods used in this campaign included:
a promotional poster campaign
colourful badges for students and clinicians, highlighting their role as either a ‘student’ or a ‘teacher’ to improve awareness of roles and encourage approachability
creation of ‘Teach me champions’, as members of the department to lead their colleagues in the campaign
adverts in trust education bulletins to create hospital-wide awareness
oral presentation to students and staff to highlight aims and goals of the campaign
provision of techniques on how to integrate teaching into service provision in a practical way
documentation for students and staff essential to their learning and teaching
patient information leaflets
email communications to all staff and students
support in all of the above from the education team.
After the campaign week, focus groups were undertaken with students and staff, and to assess what impact the campaign had.
Results
Positive outcome themes from student and staff debrief focus groups.
Students found staff with badges more approachable, which allowed them to seek learning opportunities more. Staff found the badges helped identify the students.
Greater awareness of students on the ward and their learning needs, some students showing more enthusiasm, with reported better overall experience.
Techniques given to clinicians to integrate teaching into practice were useful and enjoyed by the students, and are to be continued after the campaign.
Potential changes to student timetable highlighted.
Some themes for areas of improvement: only partial engagement of student cohort with the campaign, with some reporting only small change to interactions with clinicians and overall experience.
Conclusion
Our observations on the instigation of this campaign show success in promoting teaching and student participation with increased student and clinician engagement. It was multidisciplinary in its approach; positively impacting learning experiences for some students. Learning from this endeavour will inform different approaches in the future for improving students’ engagement. The campaign demonstrates a novel approach to improving medical students’ experience, by addressing concerns regarding integration and engagement, in a way that conventional educational methods would not have been suitable. Secondarily, it highlighted potential improvements to the working of the placements, including timetable changes, and has an ongoing impact in the form of newly initiated clinical education techniques being continued by clinicians after the campaign. The methods used are transferable to any clinical area and can be expanded to postgraduate education. We plan to roll out the campaign to other areas with a view to development of a trust-wide programme in the future.
Conflict of interest statement
No conflict of interest for any of the authors.