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

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.

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.

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

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

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).

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.