As part of the Agents of Change curriculum for year one, all students complete an audit within their GCM practice during second semester. This group project introduced us to the audit cycle and contributed to our portfolio development—furthering skills that are essential to becoming competent, well-rounded doctors.
I was in a group with two other students, and our audit was titled ‘Investigating if female patients (14-54) being prescribed topical retinoids have had appropriate contraceptive advice.’ Using electronic patient records, we were able to see if patients had received appropriate contraceptive advice upon initiation of topical retinoid therapy by primary or secondary care. From the collected data we were able to explore if variables, such as age or parity, affected the advice given. While this project was demanding and time-consuming, by the submission deadline we were extremely proud of our project, and we enjoyed presenting our findings and recommendations to the GP partners at the practice.
With the success of our submission and presentation we felt our project had wider implications for patient safety and prescribing practices. Therefore, we decided to submit our abstract to various conferences. We got accepted as a poster presentation in the ‘Discovering Research 2024: DRAMS National Medical and Dental Student Conference’, at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. As we were all in different regional placements, we travelled from three corners of Scotland (Dumfries, Inverness and Fife) to Tayside to showcase our work.
We were given five minutes to talk through our research, before being asked questions by top medical academics. This was our opportunity to cohesively explain our audit’s headline results and reaffirm recommendations for providing contraceptive advice to patients on topical retinoids. We were then rewarded with a nice lunch and copious amounts of tea and coffee.
In the afternoon we enjoyed a series of oral presentations by fellow medical students which covered a wide range of topics from cardiovascular health to oncology. It was interesting to hear about individual projects from different universities. To end the day, we were able to network with fellow students over cups of herbal tea.
This was the first conference I attended where I presented my own work. While quite daunting, having the support from my friends and colleagues allowed me to feel at ease and by the end of the presentation I was ready to speak again! One of the great things about ScotGEM is how early we’re encouraged to build our professional portfolios. Experiences like these give us the chance to be not only to develop as clinicians but also collaborate with stakeholders. In the future we are hoping to be able to present our work at national and international conferences!
Watch this space!
Megan Goode
Megan Goode is a second-year ScotGEM student