A near-peer regional surgical teaching programme designed by medical students, delivered by junior doctors

Background: Near-peer teaching initiatives has been shown to be a highly successful method of improving student learning. There has been little data on surgical teaching initiatives of this kind and little data to show if this improves student confidence in surgical topics. This study was designed to show whether a regional surgical teaching programme, delivered by junior doctors, improves confidence levels of students prior to their final examinations. Method: Final year medical students were invited from four hospitals in the Northern deanery of England to participate in a voluntary surgical teaching day. Junior doctors were then recruited to present on various surgical topics based on their own knowledge and experience of finals examinations and working on the wards. A pre and post-course questionnaire was designed, validated and distributed to the students to assess their confidence on a five-point Likert scale of 1-5 (1- most confidence, 5- least confidence) levels in each of the 11 chosen topics. Other variables were also measured relating to the topics including visual material, enthusiasm, content relevance and communication. Results: 53 students completed the questionnaire (n = 53). There were 31 females and 22 males with a mean age of 24.7. A mean level of confidence of 2.7 pre-course and 1.6 post-course showed an increase in confidence by 68.8%. All eleven topics covered showed improvement in confidence. General Surgical Principles showed the lowest improvement in confidence from 2.683 to 1.917 (p = <0.001) compared to endocrine which showed the maximum increased in confidence from 3.650 to 1.694 (p = <0.0001). Orthopedics showed an increased in confidence from 3.010 to 1.62 (p = <0.0001). Conclusion: Near-peer education designed by medical students and delivered by junior doctors is an effective way for improving confidence levels and test results prior to finals examination and is also valuable for junior doctors.