I am a medical student, in my 5th Year, at Keele University Medical School. This year I am intercalating, undertaking a research masters (MPhil) in Primary Care Sciences. As part of this I am conducting research evaluating the prevalence of depression in patients with polymyalgia rheumatica. In my spare time, I enjoy playing the violin; I am a member of the University Hospital Orchestra.

I have been involved with the College of Medicine since 2011, when I attended the first summer school on ‘obesity’ in Southampton. This gave me the opportunity to meet and work with students from other health care disciplines. I learnt a lot from, and thoroughly enjoyed, this experience. As a result, I was keen to participate in subsequent summer schools run by the College of Medicine, and so attended the ‘healthy ageing’ summer school in 2012 in Birmingham and also the ‘self care and resilience’ summer school in 2014 in London. At both of these summer schools, I had the opportunity to showcase research that I had conducted, in the form of poster presentations.

As part of my role as a College of Medicine student leader I hope to be able to get involved with organising and running future summer schools and events, to help encourage and facilitate multidisciplinary working in students from all healthcare disciplines. I hope this will give students an insight into multidisciplinary team working and better prepare them for this.