Near-peer teaching in clinical neuroanatomy

Background: Near-peer teaching involves students being taught by more senior students and draws on their similar knowledge base and shared experiences. It has been used previously for teaching gross anatomy, but has not yet been reported specifically for neuroanatomy. At the University of Southampton there is no formal neuroanatomy teaching during the clinical years, and so a nearpeer teaching programme was developed to support students, learning in between attending their clinical attachments. Methods: A series of seven sessions were organised and delivered by two medical students throughout the 2010 /11 academic year, and each session was evaluated by using participant feedback forms. Results: Sixty feedback forms were returned by the students, giving an average rating for the overall quality of the sessions of 4.3 out of 5.0. There was an 18 per cent increase in the student's perceived level of knowledge (p < 0.0001) as a result of our near-peer teaching sessions. The most common feed-back received from our students related to the availability of handouts and expressions of gratitude. Discussion: The results from this teaching development support the use of near-peer teaching in neuroanatomy. In this article we provide some evidence to suggest that students feel more confident with neuroanatomy after attending these sessions, and describe some unique advantages of this teaching programme over sessions led by faculty staff. The wider benefits to both faculty staff and student teachers are also considered.