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Heartbeat: Podcasts improve education for 5th year medical students

February 28, 2020

Our medical doctors have embraced an innovative teaching programme for 5th year medical students with podcasting at the forefront of the teachings.

The aim is to deliver pharmacology teaching that is practical and more importantly, maximises retention of knowledge.

Students who attend the podcast sessions listen to the topics beforehand and then the teaching sessions themselves focus on the real-life prescribing scenarios and situations on that particular topic. This means that the students have lectures through a podcast before their actual teaching session.

“The podcasts empower our students with essential knowledge which better allows them to control the pace of their learning before attending the sessions,” said Vijaytha Muralidharan, Core Medical Trainee.

The sessions are delivered weekly to 5th year medical students at our Sandwell Medical Education Centre and are a collaborative teaching effort between both doctors and pharmacists.

“The doctors delivering the teaching provide students with cases based on real patients and can answer clinical questions and provide tips whilst the pharmacists are able to provide knowledge of doses, availability of medications and interactions,” explained Amardeep Singh, Lead Pharmacist HIV/GUM.

“The sessions allow students to prescribe on paper charts as well as ask pharmacists for input when required. This intends to simulate their roles as an F1 in terms of prescribing, and allows them to further understand the role of the pharmacists,” said Dr Piru Pathmarajah, who also helped develop this teaching initiative.

Saket Singhal, Consultant in Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Head of Undergraduate Academy, believes prior to the podcasting sessions, students were restricted to more traditional methods of learning. He said: “The students were limited to conventional methods of learning – a combination of study days at university and teaching on the acutely ill patient module.”

The podcasts were developed by Dr Shri Pathmakanthan, Gastroenterologist at University Hospital Birmingham and Vijaytha during her year as a Clinical Teaching Fellow. If you wish to find out more about learning topics within the podcast episodes you can by downloading “PodDoc” on the App Store on Apple devices and Google Play Store on Android devices for £3.99.