Medical Students Teaching Medical Students Surgical Skills: The Benefits of Peer-Assisted Learning

Abstract

Objective: Teaching surgical skills is a labor intensive process, requiring a high tutor to student ratio for optimal success, and teaching for undergraduate students by consultant surgeons is not always feasible. A surgical skills course was developed, with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of undergraduate surgical peer-assisted learning.

Design: Five surgical skills courses were conducted looking at eight domains in surgery, led by foundation year doctors and senior medical students, with a tutor to student ratio of 1:4. Precourse and postcourse questionnaires (Likert scales 0-10) were completed. Mean scores were compared precourse and postcourse.

Setting: Surgical skills courses took place within clinical skills rooms in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (UK).

Participants: Seventy students (59 medical, 2 dental, and 9 physician associate students) from a range of academic institutions across the UK completed the course.

Results: There was an overall increase in mean scores across all eight domains. Mean improvement score precourse and postcourse in WHO surgical safety checklist (+3.94), scrubbing (+2.99), gowning/gloving (+3.34), knot tying (+5.53), interrupted sutures (+5.89), continuous sutures (+6.53), vertical mattress sutures (+6.46), and local anesthesia (+3.73).

Conclusions: Peer-assisted learning is an effective and feasible method for teaching surgical skills in a controlled environment, subsequently improving confidence among healthcare undergraduates. Such teaching may provide the basis for feasibly mass-producing surgical skills courses for healthcare students.

Keywords: Medical Knowledge; Patient Care; Practice-Based Learning and Improvement; medical education; medical student; peer-assisted learning; surgical skills.