Assessing the Impact of an Undergraduate Medical Student Volunteer Hospital Program: Active Mind Active Body

Active Mind Active Body (AMAB) is a novel student-led program designed to lessen cognitive and physical isolation in hospitalized patients by facilitating social and physical activities. It offers preclinical undergraduate medical students (UMS), who often have limited clinical exposure, structured encounters while engaging patients socially, cognitively and physically. The aim of this study was to evaluate AMAB patient encounters and assess the experience of participating UMS.

Using convergent mixed methods, data were collected from the following sources: anonymized patient encounter records quantifying participating patients and types of activities, a postshift volunteer feedback form and a program evaluation survey. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis.

A total of 424 encounters with 220 patients were completed from July 2021 to August 2023. Nearly all (98%) encounters included socialization, and many included cognitive activities (27%) or physical activity (22%). Thirty-four UMS (56%, 34/61) completed the study survey. Most UMS perceived AMAB as valuable for patients (94%) and meaningful for UMS (88%). UMS (67%) reported exposure to different medical specialties and (74%) felt their involvement would impact how they engage with patients. UMS indicated improvement in communication skills, interprofessional collaboration and relationship building. Opportunities for program improvement included diversifying activities and implementing peer-to-peer mentoring.

The AMAB program provides impactful clinical education for UMS in communication and interprofessional collaboration. UMS also reported perceived benefit on patient mobility and social connectedness. This offers a replicable and low-cost model that can be adapted to other medical education programs.