Recently forty students, in Years 8-10, from across the South of England, attended the LifeLab Summer School for ‎prospective Medics.‎

The programmes included a range of exciting, informative and hands-on workshops delivered by Medical Students, ‎Intensive Care Consultants, Emergency Department Nurses and other Healthcare Professionals.‎
The young people were able to try suturing and basic life support, and also use some of the equipment developed ‎by the British Armed Forces for managing catastrophic haemorrhage. They had to put some of those skills to the ‎test when they met SIM Man and learned how to assess and manage a patient who is acutely unwell.‎

A practical anatomy workshop based around case histories gave students a real insight into how they might learn at ‎medical school. They were taught how to use stethoscopes to listen for heart and lung sounds and worked out ‎how these related to the anatomy they were looking at on models.‎
The event was supported by the Critical Care Programme at University Hospital Southampton who ran a thrilling ‎trauma simulation, based around a child actor who had severe burns. Students were then able to explore some of ‎the equipment they had seen in the simulation when they tried intubation on models. Students were also ‎extremely privileged to be taken on a tour of the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Department.‎

The Keynote Speaker was Surgeon, Mr Tim Underwood. Tim captivated students with the description of his day-‎to-day work, and inspired them with videos and pictures of the pioneering work he does in cancer treatment and ‎research.‎

The Students finished the programme by presenting some of their learning and experience to their parents who ‎stayed to attend a talk from the Medical Admissions team on applying for Medical School.‎
Dr. Hannah Davey, LifeLab Teaching Fellow commented “It was clear that the students found the whole ‎experience to be exciting and engaging. We hope that we have inspired some fantastic future Doctors!”‎

LifeLab is a science education intervention designed to change young people’s attitudes and behaviour towards ‎their own health, and the health of their future children, through a hands-on, science-oriented teaching package.‎ LifeLab is a collaboration of researchers from the University’s Education School, Faculty of Medicine, and the Mathematics and Science Learning Centre.

Posted By : Janice Griffiths