During the pandemic, hundreds of medicine, dentistry, nursing and pharmacology students from King’s volunteered to be part of an award-winning vaccination service led by Dr Russell Hearn and co-designed with students. With an ambition to improve community uptake of the Covid vaccine, they administered the jabs at pop-up clinics in local mosques, churches, schools, foodbanks and community centres, and even at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Some were also involved in the UK’s first 24-hour Jabathon at the Morris House Group Practice in Haringey.
The positive response from students who took part prompted Dr Hearn, Reader in Medical Education, to co-author a study1 with Dr Johannes Driessen, an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow at King’s, into the extent to which this front-line clinical experience enabled the development of vital skills beyond the core curriculum, such as professionalism, self-regulating learning and ethical decision making.
The study uncovered four main benefits to students of being involved in the vaccination programme:
- The experience of being integrated within a multi-disciplinary primary care team helped develop their overall sense of professional identity. Wary of introducing themselves to patients as ‘medical students’, they tended to use the term ‘vaccinator’ instead and found that over time they built confidence in that identity, which they were able to take into subsequent clinical placements.
- Reinforcing a sense of purpose, with students reporting that they were highly motivated to support vulnerable patients and their local communities, with one saying: ‘I loved the community spirit that it brought, because I’m from here and I wanted to give back to my own area.’
- Better understanding of what it means to balance clinical priorities and ethical judgements thanks to peer evaluation of their approaches to securing patient consent while working under pressure.
- Learning to assess clinical risk while working with challenging patients.
It’s no wonder then that three years on, our students are still keen to get involved with the delivery of seasonal vaccinations. Siddharth Menon, a medical student, and Sam De Vaux, a student in the dental school, are both studying for the Intercalated BSc in Primary Care, and have been on placement at the Morris House Group Practice. Under supervision from Dr Hearn, both have been administering flu and Covid vaccinations to patients in clinic.
Sidd explained: “Giving jabs can be seen as quite a basic clinical skill in comparison to some of the other things you learn over the course of the MBBS programme, but I was far from confident in my abilities at the start and really appreciated the chance to practice under supervision. When I did my first vaccination, my hand was shaking, but by the end it felt like a very routine thing. It was great to see your skills really come on. If you were to ask me to volunteer for the programme again, I would say yes, 100%!”
Sam added: “For me it was a great opportunity to maintain the manual dexterity skills I’ve learned on my course so far – giving a flu vaccination is a whole lot easier than giving oral injections as a dental student! I really enjoyed the patient interactions as well. Communicating with patients about vaccines is quite different to talking to them in other circumstances. They may have preconceived ideas and misconceptions from things they’ve read online, and it can be challenging making sure every patient has the information they need, especially in a time pressured environment where you only have five minutes per patient. Watching Dr Hearn communicate taught me a lot about how to manage the conversation and bring the session to a natural close without the patient feeling rushed.”
Being a volunteer vaccinator in the community offers students valuable experience that really enhances their learning, and we at King’s will certainly be encouraging their involvement for years to come.