We would like to offer a huge congratulations to Dillon Vyas, the winner of the Zeshan Qureshi Award for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Education 2019.
My interests in medical education started when I got involved with the Leeds Medical Education Academy (LMEA). LMEA is a week-long summer school for widening participation sixthform students to give them exposure to what it’s like being a medical student through workshops and lectures themed around different specialties. In my 2nd year I lead the Academic Medicine day and in my 4th year I lead the Paediatrics day. This year, the Covid-19 pandemic has meant, I’ve been given the task to coordinate the first ever virtual summer school. This will be an interesting challenge but a good opportunity to learn about online resources to integrate in my future medical education. Being a widening participation student myself and attending these workshops whilst I was in sixthform, I had first-hand experience of the impact a passionate and enthusiastic teacher has in raising aspirations of students from low socio-economic backgrounds to consider a career in medicine.
Setting up the Neurosurgery simulation workshop in Sheffield allowed me to work with a Consultant Neurosurgeon and a team of registrars to put together a curriculum including the most important skills in Neurosurgery aimed at medical students who may have never stepped foot in a Neurosurgical theatre. We had the most recent technology used in Neurosurgery training, such as the Rowena simulation head. All delegates that participated in the workshop felt more confident about attending and assisting in the theatre following the workshop and therefore we’ve ran the workshop annually.
With a group of colleagues from my intercalation class, I set up ‘Neuroanatomy Clinic’ which is a charity to raise money for projects in the hospital through running a neuroanatomy revision course for medical students. Neuroanatomy Clinic helps us as educators improve our knowledge of Neuroanatomy and experiment new methods of teaching. I also believe training a successful doctor isn’t just learning the anatomy, physiology and pathology in a lecture theatre but learning from the stories of our patients, therefore we wanted to use the money we raised from the revision courses to give back to the patients. Last Christmas we used some of our profits to buy new toys for Sheffield Children’s Hospital.
I would like to continue improving my skills in medical education as a doctor and not only contribute to the development of the next generation of doctors but also use my skills to improve my patient’s understanding of their condition.
