key: cord-1003339-965ex951
authors: Chan, See Chai Carol; Choa, George; Eboreime, Oziegbe; Rashid, Mohammed Ahmed
title: For Students, by Students: a Peer-Led Entrepreneurship Course for Medical Students
date: 2021-09-29
journal: Med Sci Educ
DOI: 10.1007/s40670-021-01410-y
sha: fa9e326262abb48edd09a067f7ad859e8f08ce09
doc_id: 1003339
cord_uid: 965ex951

Recognising the growing importance of clinical leadership and entrepreneurship to implement innovative healthcare solutions, final year UK medical students developed a near-peer elective module for first- and second-year students. To date, five cohorts have completed the module and developed skills in the fields of medical technology, quality improvement, and leadership.

entrepreneurship have had little exposure in undergraduate medical curricula, and there is no consensus about how best to integrate them into medical training [2] .

Supervised by a faculty member, three final-year medical students in their 6-year medical degree at a UK medical school initiated, conceptualised, designed and delivered an 8-week elective module on medical innovation and entrepreneurship for first-and second-year medical students. The programme focused on various aspects of entrepreneurship in medicine, including quality improvement (QI) methodology, leadership, innovation and technology. The founding team of students identified these to be key areas that had helped them to understand the role of a medical entrepreneur, during their involvement in various extracurricular entrepreneurship activities in medical school.

The aim of the module is to foster pre-clinical students' leadership abilities early on and to help students develop an entrepreneurial mindset in order to evaluate common problems in medical education and healthcare settings. Unlike the didactic methods commonly used in UK medical schools for most curricular areas, there is a particular focus on teambased, case-based and game-based learning to nurture lateral thinking for problem-solving and promote collaboration. It encompasses various pedagogical approaches to cater to students' learning preferences. Examples of the module's session topics, learning objectives, and activities are provided in Table 1 .

The module consists of a total of eight weekly sessions, each lasting 3 h. These sessions are led by the peer tutors and complemented with workshops from 'doctorpreneurs' [3] -doctors working in various entrepreneurial roles (artificial intelligence, mobile application development, medical simulation etc.) The module culminates in students working in groups of three to four to design a healthcare improvement project that draws on their learning and enables them to pursue an interest further. The assessment for each student is based partly (50%) on a group project presentation that outlines their healthcare challenge and explains how their interventions are implemented and evaluated, and partly (50%) on a 360-degree appraisal and evaluation on their teamwork and leadership dynamics. Near-peer teaching from senior medical students has been shown to lead to greater cognitive and social congruences, with learners being able to better comprehend complex topics and teachers being more in tune with learners' needs and concerns. It also alleviates pressure on the medical faculty and helps peer tutors to further their educational skills. Prior to graduating, the founding group of students selected successors through a written application documenting teaching and medical innovation experiences and an interview process. Successors shadowed peer tutors prior to taking on the module leadership roles, ensuring continuity and opportunities for continual module development. Peer tutors who have been involved in leading the module have universally reported that the process has considerably improved their confidence and teaching and assessment skills.

Five cohorts of students have taken the module thus far from 2019, with approximately 20 learners per cohort. Students' feedback through the university's standardised Student Evaluation Questionnaires has been overwhelmingly positive. Over 90% of students strongly agreed that the module was well-structured and well-organised. Students stated that the peer-tutors were approachable, encouraged collaboration and facilitated discussions well. Students appreciated the useful and relevant feedback from the peer tutors, as the tutors were familiar with learning objectives and understood the challenges from the students' perspectives. Students were intrigued by the problem-based and team-based approaches, but as these were unfamiliar to them and not covered in the main curriculum, they suggested further training on these approaches which has since been included. Overall, students felt empowered and more confident to pursue opportunities to become future entrepreneurs. Near-peer teaching is increasingly recognised as an efficient and effective method of teaching and learning in traditional medical curricular areas. The preliminary positive reception of this module suggests that it could also be further developed and evaluated in emerging curricular areas, like medical entrepreneurship. The use of peer tutors who are passionate about, and have experience in, medical entrepreneurship, was a key factor in the success of this module.

Ethics Approval Not applicable.

The authors declare no competing interests.

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