Our current First Year Student Doctors undertook the annual trip to the Altcar Training Camp last week, as part of an ongoing collaboration between the School of Medicine and army personnel in Liverpool 208 Field Hospital.
The session was co-ordinated by the Year 1 Team and Professor Emeritus John Earis, and put students through a series of non-medical planning and command exercises designed to challenge them both mentally and physically, and to encourage effective planning and teamwork in an unfamiliar environment.
The day enables students to learn lessons that they can apply to their clinical practice and teams both now and in their future careers.
Students were grouped with peers they didn't know, who attend different teaching sessions than their own, in order to demonstrate the challenges of working in multi-disciplinary teams.
First Year Student Doctor, Maria Oproiu, agreed the day was effective at demonstrating how to come together as a team quickly:
“It's actually been really fun. I think I've got to know a lot more people today than I knew before, and it’s been really - it's been quite a challenge”.
There were 5 stations they rotated through throughout the day, and for which they elected a different leader from within their group. Leaders were encouraged to formulate plans to complete each task, whilst delegating tasks within the wider group.
The exercises themselves are true-to-life scenarios used by the Armed Forces in their Officer Recruitment Training and form part of the MBChB programme’s ‘Clinical Team’ theme, focusing on developing an understanding of self and others, a key component of successful medical practice.
They also demonstrate the importance of effective leadership and assessment in unfamiliar situations, and students were offered the chance to feedback both on each other’s performance, the leader’s performance, and received commentary from the Army Instructors after each task, detailing how their performance would relate to a clinical environment:
First Year Student Doctor, Haydn Fielder agreed:
“It was really different and not what I expected; some of the problems we did like the building ones, that’s very unique and took me entirely out of my comfort zone & by surprise”.
Key themes that emerged from the activities were the art of listening, of creating an effective organisational structure, and how to assess complex scenarios under pressured conditions.
Students were also encouraged to reflect on each other’s leadership styles, and how competing techniques from different approaches might be incorporated into differing but equally effective approaches.
First Year Student Doctor Evie Huhtala perhaps summed it up best:
“Leadership is obviously so important and today showed that well. But for me it showed that sometimes being a good team member is just as important as being a good team leader because you can’t achieve just yourself, everybody has to be willing to all put in equal amount of effort”.
Well done to our Year One students! And huge thanks to Professor Earis and the entire team at 208 Field Hospital who play such an important role in the MBChB programme here at Liverpool.
"Music: Remember by KaizanBlu" - available here (link)