Sixth-Form ‘Work Experience’ day
William Harvey Clinical Research Centre
This day was our contribution to a week of ‘work experience’ organised by the Medical school of Queen Mary University. In advance, I prepared Student Welcome Packs – photocopying documents and inserting them into TrialsConnect folders. Then there was liaising with staff regarding student numbers, obtaining their names for their id labels and the supply of these.
Arriving early on morning of the 11th July, I wrote out the labels and split the names into four separate groups.
As on a previous similar day, the thirty-or-so students were divided into four groups: Clinical, Vascular, EPQ, and Histories and each group circulated onto the next subject in turn.
I was a supervisor/observer (for want of a better description) for the Histories groups. The sessions appeared to go very well in that the interactions with the volunteer patients as the sixth-formers completed ‘history’ forms, based on those used when patients first begin a clinical trial, were very good and the students seemed invested in what they were doing.
There were a few hiccups at the start mainly because there were two or three student latecomers who happened to be from the Histories group. They then needed an explanation of what they were expected to do. This was also true of one patient.
During the session intervals I visited the other groups in turn to collect each group and from what I could see these students were animated and appeared interested in what they had seen and heard.
I did make a note shortly after the visit with a few more observations and suggestions as to how we may possibly improve things.
