Our healthy ageing themed summer school gave students across healthcare disciplines a chance to meet each other, get a rounded picture of the topic – and talk to service users about their experiences

This mix of opportunities is conceptually simple enough, but still fairly rare in the medical education of most students.  Perhaps for this reason, the summer school was for a second year very oversubscribed, but the College is hoping that other work throughout the year will give a wider group of students a taste of our approach.

We are very grateful to the University of Birmingham for hosting the event.

 

In print

Occupational Therapy News, published by the College of Occupational Therapists, published this piece by Claire Jackson who attended the course.

A short write up for Keele Medical School News by Alicia Barnes and Arani Vivekanantham

 

Watch the film

One of the central messages of the course is that regular exercise can make a huge difference to health as people grow older.  We invited the group Move it or Lose it to give a session and their resulting film is here.

 

What students said

So what did students think?  We an overview here from Sarah Stuart, a 3rd year medic from the University of Nottingham.

Here is a flavour of other comments:

‘Yes – I found it useful to exchange views and ideas with students from other disciplines. I feel that if the health professions can work as effectively together as we did at the summer school; respecting each other’s ideas and learning from them; then the health service and its patients have a promising future. It showed the importance of inter-professional working. It also developed my knowledge of healthy ageing which will hopefully be useful when applying for jobs later this year!’

‘I found it so useful to have the sessions with ‘real people’ on the second day. Made me think about things that had never even crossed my mind before and I feel much more aware now. It was so good to get the chance to speak to people from lots of different professions. Gave me much more understanding of what parts people play in the multidisciplinary team which will help my patients to get the best expert support from my referrals and suggestions’.

‘I loved listening to the variety of research, knowledge and experience of the speakers.’

‘The presence of the actual service users made it real and not just academic’.