We often think of medical students strictly as the recipients of education. In doing so, we operate with several questionable assumptions. One is that medical students are too busy studying for exams and the like to have time to do anything else. Another is that they do not know enough to teach anything to anyone else. Finally, we often suppose that medical students harbor no ambitions beyond doing well in their coursework.
In fact, however, whether medical students know it or not, many hunger for an opportunity to contribute to their school and fellow students. While most do not operate with a sufficient knowledge base to offer a presentation off the cuff, many are superb learners. Given the opportunity, they can acquire more than sufficient understanding of a topic to teach it well. Many students have time to teach, and doing so can enhance their academic and professional endeavors .
In important respects, medical students enjoy some important advantages over faculty members as medical student teachers. For one thing, they usually operate with greater familiarity concerning what their fellow students know. They also know better what their colleagues do not know, which can be equally or even more educationally important. It may have been 30 years since a faculty member was a first-year student, but only a few years for a fourth-year .
Medical students also often appreciate better what will interest their colleagues. They know their life perspectives and ambitions, and they are more conversant with medical student culture. Knowing learners’ interests is hugely helpful in trying to connect new ideas with existing interests and priorities. A medical student who was sitting in the learners’ same place just a few years ago is often better equipped to make this determination .
On this point, one fourth-year medical student recently commented: “I remember well what it was like to be a first-year. You are sitting in those seats feeling clueless, unsure what is important and what isn’t, and feeling overwhelmed by the amount of new information bombarding you. You desperately want to see how that you are learning will help you be a better doctor, and how you will use the information in caring for patients.”
Another student offered the following observation: “Having made it through to fourth year, I can now see what we really needed to know before we entered our third-year clinical clerkships. There are some topics that, if only they had been stressed in the first 2 years, and if only their clinical relevance had been pointed out, we would have been so much better prepared. As a student-educator, I can help to make sure that the underclassmen learn these things.”
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References
1. Dandavino M., Snell L., Wiseman J.: Why medical students should learn how to teach. Med Teacher 2007; 29: pp. 558-565.
2. Allen A.R., Boraks N.: Peer tutoring: putting it to the test. Reading Teacher 1978; 32: pp. 274-278.
3. Bulte C., Betts A., Garner K., et. al.: Student teaching: views of student near-peer teachers and learners. Med Teacher 2007; 29: pp. 583-590.
4. Ten Cate O., Durning S.: Peer teaching in medical education: twelve reasons to move from theory to practice. Med Teacher 2007; 29: pp. 591-599.
5. Novak S.H., Quinn M., Canan T., et. al.: A new approach to learning how to teach: medical students as instructional designers. Med Educ Online 2011; pp. 16.