Fiona Muir¹
1 Dundee University 

Most doctors engage in teaching to a greater or lesser extent and as such need to keep their skills and knowledge up to date. While there appears to be no formal requirement or pre-defined route by which trainee doctors can become competent teachers during their undergraduate medical degree, Dundee Medical School Scotland offers students a choice to undertake a BMSc (Hons) Medical Education intercalated degree. 

The BMSc is designed with modules of study, teaching portfolio with associate fellowship, educational research, and dissertation which are assessed. This BMSc is the first to be accredited by Advance HE for this specific group of students to achieve Associate Fellowship of Advance HE (AFHEA) (Advance HE, 2023a); a badge of international recognition increasingly sought by employers across the education sector and clinical academic posts. 

Students undertake an assessed teaching portfolio of authentic teaching experiences as part of the BMSc Medical Education Programme. This provides medical students an opportunity to develop core knowledge, skills, and attributes to educate peers and colleagues, and their patients (General Medical Council, 2019). 

Students achieving BMSc with AFHEA status (n=70), via an assessed teaching portfolio, places value on professional values; knowledge of teaching and research; effective and inclusive practice and the notion that the ‘student as teacher’ intercalated programme is an asset to medical education (Muir, Bruce and McConville, 2020). 

The BMSc embeds authentic teaching practice within an assessed teaching portfolio aligned with Advance HE requirements, and provides a valuable measure of success, demonstrates commitment to teaching, learning and the student experience, through engagement in a practical process; a route by which trainee doctors can develop their competence as teachers. 

There is value of embedding an assessed teaching portfolio within a Medical Education Intercalated Degree Programme with Associate Fellowship of Advance HE. 

References (maximum three) 

Advance HE. 2023a. [accessed 7 July 2023]. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/news- andviews/Dundee-Medical-students-recognised-as-Associate-Fellows-for-first-time 

Good Medical Practice. 2019. [accessed 7 July 2023]. https://www.gmc- uk.org//media/documents/good-medical-practice---english-1215_pdf-51527435.pdf 

Muir, F. Bruce, J and McConville, K. (2020) Teaching, reflecting, and learning: The value of an intercalated medical education programme, Medical Teacher, 42:5, 523-528, DOI: 10.1080/0142159X.2019.1708290