The Singapore Family Physician

Back to issue Vol 42 No. 3 - Advance Care Planning and End of Life Care

An Evaluation of a Student-led faculty supported Inter-professional Student Medicial-Nursing Education Conference (SMEC)

Kee Ae Ra
Durnford Jared Ryan
Lim Fang Yi
Edwin Chow Wei Xiang
Kimberly Oen Qian Hui
Prakash Prajwala S
John Tam Kit Chung
Gerald Koh Choon-Huat
The Singapore Family Physician Vol 42 No 3 - Advance Care Planning and End of Life Care
70 - 74
1 September 2016
0377-5305
Purpose: There are relatively few student-led medical conferences worldwide. A group of medical and nursing students from Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, organized an annual student-led faculty-supported inter-professional Student Medical-Nursing Education Conference (SMEC), which consisted of plenary talks, lectures and workshops, and a scientific competition. This research focused on the evaluation of workshops conducted during the 8th SMEC 2012. Method: The authors used various process variables to survey the conference participants on the educational value of the 4 plenary lectures and 20 workshops, half of which were run by experienced healthcare professionals and the other half by current seniors or recent graduates. Results: A total of 270 medical and nursing students completed the survey. Good to excellent educational value was reported for most of the workshops. Higher educational value was associated with use of props (correlation coefficient, r=0.733 and 0.568), adherence to workshop topic/focus (r=0.608 and 0.815) and openness of presenter to questions (r=0.555 and 0.453). Conclusion: A student-led, faculty-supported inter-professional conference organized by medical and nursing students had good to excellent self-reported education value in helping their fellow medical and nursing students learn about various healthcare disciplines and prepare for medical and nursing school.