Students as anatomy near-peer teachers: a double-edged sword for an ancient skill

Abstract

BackgroundA near-peer instructors (NPI) program was designed for 1st year medical students who successfully finished the Anatomy course, in order to develop their didactic ability and teaching skills, mostly for cadaver dissection.MethodsGraduates of the training program were administered a voluntary survey at the end of the program, annually. Best graduates of the training program were offered a NPI position in the next academic year. They were evaluated by the first-year students, at the end of the Anatomy block.ResultsIn a debriefing questionnaire at the end of the NPI training, on the five-point Likert scale (1 = lowest to 5 = highest), the overall rating ranged from 3.63 in 2013 to 3.71 in 2015. Learning prosection and anatomy demonstration skills scored on average from 4.30 to 4.36, respectively. The NPIs were then evaluated by first-year students at the end of the next year’s Anatomy block. On the Likert scale, the average score of NPIs ranged from 4.10 in 2014 to 4.75 in 2016, on the par with the general satisfaction score for the professional preclinical teachers during the same period (which ranged from 3.80 to 4.26).ConclusionsIt is suggested that students as near-peer instructors can make a valuable contribution to the teaching faculty, especially in a new medical school.

Peer teacher training for health professional students: a systematic review of formal programs

“…The literature contained global examples of student teacher training programs. Programs were implemented in the United States of America (USA) (7/19) [ 10 – 16 ], Germany (4/19) [ 17 – 20 ], Australia (4/19) [ 21 – 24 ], Netherlands (1/19) [ 25 ], United Kingdom (UK) (1/19) [ 26 ], Canada (1/19) [ 27 ] and Israel (1/19) [ 28 ]. One program was student led [ 26 ], implemented by the Junior Association for the Study of Medical Education (JASME), a UK student run organization.…”

“…Blanco et al hypothesised that students may become better learners and enhance their communication skills as a result of teaching training and experience [ 11 ]. Programs were also implemented to help overcome problems associated with a shortage of teaching resources [ 28 ] and curriculum uniformity [ 18 ]. The program description provided by Dickman et al acknowledged a need to overcome a shortage of qualified anatomy dissection instructors within the newly formed Faculty of Medicine as a driving force for the initiation of a near-peer teaching program to train such instructors [ 28 ].…”

“…Within this program, Schuetz et al indicated that “near-peer is not necessarily reflected by a higher semester of the student teacher compared to the tutee, but rather in a measurable knowledge advance of the student teacher, for example in terms of a successfully completed assessment or a successfully visited course in which the tutees have not yet successfully participated” [ 18 ] (p73). Dickman et al, who introduced their program to first year students, did this largely out of necessity to rapidly prepare suitably trained student teachers to address teaching resource issues within a newly formed program [ 28 ]. Two programs involved medical students in their second year of training [ 15 , 27 ].…”

“…Recruitment of participants was largely associated with students’ expressed interest in teaching and leadership experiences [ 10 , 14 , 15 , 21 , 27 , 28 ]. Some recruitment processes entailed program conveners disseminating email invitations to targeted cohort of students [ 21 , 24 ].…”

The Efficacy of Frontline Near‐Peer Teaching in a Modern Medical Curriculum

“…Near‐peer teaching has been used in health sciences and medicine (Krych et al, ; Nieder et al, ; Gill et al, ) to supplement the delivery of complex topics (Krych et al, ; Gill et al, ). In medicine, NPT has been used to deliver a wide range of subjects including cardiopulmonary resuscitation (Hughes et al, ), communication skills (Nestel and Kidd, ), physiology (Jackson and Evans, ), radiology (Naeger et al, ) and anatomy (Ocel et al, ; Hall et al, ; Dickman et al, ).…”