Professor Sankar Sinha recently conducted the second of his “An Interns Day In Surgery” courses (AIDS).

AIDS is an innovative teaching approach, using set scenarios, which aims to prepare 6^th year students for the challenges they will face in their intern year.

AIDS is a half-day course which aims to reduce the level of stress and anxiety felt by new interns, allowing them to act as a surgical intern in a simulated environment. They can learn through their errors making them aware of similar mistakes that may occur in a real life setting.

The learnig objectives of which are: To identify important/critical issues about surgical intern activities.  To demonstrate communication skills in practice as intern To apply organizational skills in practice as intern To manage ethical and legal issues in dealing with patient data To manage effectively with difficult professional colleagues. To demonstrate safe practices such as prescribing and charting of medicines, intravenous fluids. To apply principles of reducing medical errors. R - Mr Sinha works with students in the recent AIDS session

The students role-play as interns in two sessions - a typical ward round and surgical pre-assessment clinic. There is an interactive session at the end of each session. Communication, organizational, legal and ethical issues are discussed.

Twenty four final year students have attended this course and with a further students to participate in early August 2009.

In a recent course, third-year students participated by role playing as patients. They provided feedback to the final year students about their performance in the doctor-patient interactions. Individual feedback from the nurse observer, the role-playing patient, peers and the consultant are provided at the conclusion of each session, participants are also requested to provide feed back at the beginning and end of the session.

Evaluations from the final year students have been very positive and some of the comments made by them are as follows: “Overall vey impressive session, which is fun, non-threatening, and practical for intern training” “Ward round – very useful with many scenarios mimicking real-life situation. Good feed back from role-players” L - Final year studetns consulting in the recent AIDS session

The final year of the medical study is often called the pre-intern year and it made sense to expose students to an authentic simulated work situation. They can practice their skills on some of the common issues they will face as new interns, it provides them with experiential and contextual learning it also prepares them for disciplines other than surgery (medicine, paediatrics, Obstetrics & Gynaecology etc)

As a result, students currently have the opportunity to gain experience of working in the surgical wards, and outpatient clinics as part of their pre-intern studies. However, it is not the same as working as a surgical intern when they are directly involved in patient management and at times are at the front line of patient care. Students need to have a strong sense of risk awareness from the very first day.