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The value of near-peer teaching in the medical curriculum
Authors Sonagara VJ, Santhirakumaran S, Kalkat HS
Received 4 October 2017
Accepted for publication 15 November 2017
Published 22 January 2018 Volume 2018:9 Pages 63—64
DOI https://doi.org/10.2147/AMEP.S153240
Checked for plagiarism Yes
Review by Single anonymous peer review
Peer reviewer comments 2
Editor who approved publication: Dr Md Anwarul Azim Majumder
Vinay Jamnadas Sonagara, Swina Santhirakumaran, Harkaran Singh Kalkat
Department of Undergraduate Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK
According to the General Medical Council’s guide for “Good Medical Practice”, doctors are expected to partake in active mentoring roles and contribute to the education of other training doctors.1 This reflects the fact that medical education is an apprenticeship where the vertical transmission of knowledge from peers and colleagues contributes to a large proportion of the necessary clinical training. Therefore, peer teaching skills should be inculcated from an early stage. At Imperial College London, student-led societies encourage the cohort to take on mentoring and teaching roles to students in earlier years, in the form of near-peer teaching. However, this near-peer teaching largely remains a voluntary undertaking. Given the importance of these skills, there is an argument to be made that such tutoring schemes ought to form a more extensive and mandatory part of the medical syllabus.
A Letter to the Editor has been received and published for this article.
Disclosure
The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.
References
General Medical Council. Good Medical Practice. General Medical Council; 2013. Available from: http://www.gmcuk.org/static/documents/content/GMP_.pdf. Accessed October 3, 2017. | ||
Lockspeiser T, O’Sullivan P, Teherani A, Muller, J. Understanding the experience of being taught by peers: the value of social and cognitive congruence. Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract. 2008;13(3):361–372. | ||
Tolsgaard M, Gustafsson A, Rasmussen M, HØiby P, Müller C, Ringsted C. Student teachers can be as good as associate professors in teaching clinical skills. Med Teach. 2007;29(6):553–557. | ||
Burke J, Fayaz S, Graham K, Matthew R, Field M. Peer-assisted learning in the acquisition of clinical skills: a supplementary approach to musculoskeletal system training. Med Teach. 2007;29(6):577–582. |
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