Hi,
My name is Safiyyah, I am a medical student and more importantly, a Digital Student Intern at Edge Hill University. I will be sharing the various roles the interns within the Medical school have undertaken and how these roles may differ from the ‘typical’ intern’s assignments.
Within the first week of the student internship we were all given the initial training in regard to Blackboard and accessibility and a few pieces of software that we might be required to use, such as Panopto. It was highlighted that the majority of the interns would be working on making documents accessible within their department, this would most likely be the main project. It was clear this was not going to be the case within the Medical School through the project plans made available to us. The Medical School had been allocated three interns, two of which are Medical Students and the third is a Creative Writing Student. This aligned with the Medical School having three current projects. It was agreed upon that I was to undergo work on the Widening Access to Medicine project whilst my fellow interns undertook the Equality, Diversity, Inclusion project alongside the Postgraduate project. The allocation of projects seemed fitting as I had volunteered to help the WAM project previously and the EDI project required the skills of a creative writer.
Upon starting work on the WAM project during week 2, I was excited to get stuck in. As were we all! We all started with research tasks in our prospective projects where we would gather information regarding the topic we were given. So, for me, I was tasked with finding all the universities that had a widening access to medicine programme and make notes on the information they had available and what they offered within their programme. This research has deemed to be invaluable to me for the following tasks I was assigned. Following on from the research, the projects have involved the student interns identifying suitable candidates for clinical skills scenarios, creating scenarios that can be used in the future, filming a scenario for a summer school event taking place for a WAM event, and many more.
Pivotally, we have enjoyed working within the Medical School as we have found it to be eye opening to think about the challenges that are involved in recruiting a diverse group of simulated patients and how we can overcome these challenges. We have enjoyed exploring the websites and finding areas in which EHU can improve whilst learning new terminology and becoming familiar with the simulation centre. We all agree that it is a nice feeling knowing that our work throughout this internship will have a positive impact on future students.
At the end of the day, the work all our Digital Student Interns are doing is invaluable as it will be of benefit for both current and future students. So keep up the good work guys!
By Safiyyah Mahmood (Student Intern)
