Chaya Prasad¹
Fanglong Dong¹
1 Western University of Health Sciences 

Medical students acquire knowledge, skills, competency through curriculum delivered by experienced practicing clinical faculty. Research has shown that a stress-free environment with free exchange of ideas between tutor and tutees results in a higher level of engagement, increased clinical knowledge, competency, communication skills. This can be achieved by peer tutoring (PT) if the tutors have been well trained by the faculty. PT can be effective in sharing of curriculum related clinical knowledge and skills. We wished to evaluate the efficacy of PT in sharing of non-curriculum soft topics, such as Lifestyle Medicine (LM), with our pre-clinical students. 

LM longitudinal track in our 2 campuses enrolls 35 of students each year. In this pilot, Year 2 LM students were tutors, and their non LM peers (year 2), and incoming year 1 students were tutees. The tutors were trained by LM director, wherein they developed a relevant clinical case presentation. This was followed by an in-depth discussion of the topic with clinical reference. Tutees were asked to complete a voluntary survey, which assessed case presentations, skills of the tutors, level of engagement of tutees and overall experience. 

208/367 year 1 students and 141/377 year 2 students completed voluntary survey. Host campus tutees had highest percentage of enjoying chatting with peers(97.5%), with a statistically significant differences between 2 campuses (p=0.0289), likely due to differences in LM curriculum. 95% at both campuses had positive responses to several questions pertaining to PT experience. Host campus year 2 students had highest percentage on topic of usefulness of LM (88.1%, p=0.0325), satisfaction with presenters (98.2%,p=0.0359), “train the trainer” experience (88.1%, p=0.0116),interactive nature of large group session (88.1%, p=0.0002),enjoyable overall experience (90.8%, p=0.028), new overall experience (85.3%, p=0.0455), and usefulness of provided questions (89%, p=0.0068). Our study demonstrates that PT can be an effective teaching and learning modality. 

References (maximum three) 

1. Lessans S, Pasarica M, Kay D. Do Medical Students Appreciate Lifestyle Medicine and Are They Confident in Their Skills? PRiMER. 2022 Jun 16;6:15. doi: 10.22454/PRiMER.2022.968910. PMID: 35801195; PMCID: PMC9256293. 

2. Shenoy A, Petersen KH. Peer Tutoring in Preclinical Medical Education: A Review of the Literature. Med Sci Educ. 2019 Dec 23;30(1):537-544. doi: 10.1007/s40670-019-00895-y. PMID: 34457698; PMCID: PMC8368558. 

3. Morgan KM, Northey EE, Khalil MK. The effect of near-peer tutoring on medical students' performance in anatomical and physiological sciences. Clin Anat. 2017 Oct;30(7):922-928. doi: 10.1002/ca.22954. Epub 2017 Aug 11. PMID: 28726243.