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BackgroundMedical student education has witnessed seismic shifts over recent years, with changes to medical curricula and increased use of information technology. The declaration of a global pandemic in early 2020 has fundamentally changed the way in which medical students access their education and the impact of this will be felt for years to come. ‘Paeds in a Day’ is a voluntary movement led by senior Paediatric doctors from the East Midlands. Over the past seven years, we have led an annual face-to-face lecture series, covering the core contents of the paediatric syllabus for students at the University of Nottingham. This year, in response to social distancing restrictions, we hosted our lecture series online, allowing medical students across the UK and internationally to benefit from the course.ObjectivesOur aim is to describe the trends in student feedback received over the last seven years and outline how we will adapt our course to meet future students’ needs.MethodsA mixed-methods approach was used to analyse electronic feedback forms from April 2015 to February 2021. Trends in Likert-scale questions were quantified and for the qualitative data, a thematic analysis was undertaken to highlight key positives and identify areas for future development.ResultsBetween 2015–2021, we have conducted six lecture series, teaching 1281 medical students (range 53–653) and delivering between 10–13 lectures on each occasion. To date, all students consistently ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that the course was helpful for their paediatric revision. A handout has been regarded as a valuable addition, with 88 to 100% of students finding it useful, and a high proportion of the positive feedback analysed was related to this (5.9–15.6%). The interactive ‘fill in the gaps’ approach to the workbook received fewer positive comments in 2021 compared to 2015 (8% vs. 21%), with more calls for continuous prose and a document that is easier to edit on a computer. Pace, timings and organisation of the course seem to have improved, with more positive comments over time, however increased numbers of students requested for the series to be split over two days (3.4% in 2015 vs. 24.5% in 2021). Five percent of the critical feedback in 2021 was related to requests for access to the recordings, for those studying from home.ConclusionsSince 2015, we have consistently delivered a valuable paediatric revision course for medical students. By adapting our course in 2021, we created an online, open-access platform for a UK and international audience. We have learnt when the course is delivered online, it is harder to cover similar amounts of material in one day, likely related to students struggling with increased screen-time. Handouts continue to be important adjuncts to learning, although more are accessing these electronically. To meet their future needs, we should consider sharing recordings of our presentations, producing a handout that is easier to edit on a computer and splitting the course over two days. |
