Facilitating medical students to undertake research

Dear Sir

I read with interest the article titled ‘Publication practices of medical students at British medical schools: Experience, attitudes and barriers to publish’ (Griffin & Hindocha 2011) and a medical student's letter titled ‘Low medical student publishing rates: Lack or opportunity or initiative?’ (Mabvuure 2012).

I have recently recruited medical students to assist with my research project exploring students’ experience in medical school. I felt a major barrier to medical students pursing research and researchers offering research opportunities is the lack of time. This contributes to the fragmentation of medical students’ research experiences. During the term time, it is unlikely students can spend more than half a day with researchers during office hours on a regular basis without affecting their attendance at scheduled teachings. As researchers, we cannot afford to wait for medical students to be available before resuming with our work either. So, how could medical students contribute to a research project in a meaningful way?

We need to be inventive and flexible with the way we involve students in research so that they can experience the whole research process. Students could assist with research activities that can be carried out at their own time. I recognised this is not always possible especially for laboratory-based activities due to health and safety issues. The use of technology could facilitate close supervision of their research activities without the need for regular face-to-face meetings.

In my case, my students will assist with practice interviews and transcribing anonymised audio recordings of actual interviews. These activities will be carried out at their spare time. We will discuss the data regularly so that they can get a flavor of qualitative research. We will communicate via electronic mail and telephone as well as face-to-face meetings where students will get to learn more about the research process.

By making it easier for medical students to make a meaningful contribution to a research project, I think they will be more likely to step forward and get involve in research.