Member Article

Medical student gets to the heart of the community

A Durham University student recently found out that there’s more to medical training than working with hospitals and GP surgeries. Hazel Kingston, 28, who studies medicine at Durham University’s Queen’s Campus in Stockton, has just completed her placement at the Barnardo’s SECOS (Sexual Exploitation of Children on the Streets) Project in Middlesbrough, which works to enable young people to exit and recover from exploitation through prostitution.

As part of the first and second year of the medicine degree in Durham University’s Queen’s Campus, Stockton, students are put on placements at organisations across Tees Valley including charities, community groups and prisons to help them respect and relate to patients and colleagues from a range of backgrounds.

Hazel said: “My placement has been a real eye-opener. I’ve seen situations that I wouldn’t ordinarily have seen and I’ve been in a privileged position. In a hospital you don’t really get to see the context of people’s lives in terms of deprivation. “I used to take things for granted but this placement has made me more grateful and more open minded to people’s lives.”

Professor John McLachlan, Academic Director of the Medicine Programme said: “By embedding the curriculum in the community, students get a broad view of how medicine fits into society by getting direct experience and learning in the real world. The benefit of allowing students to see their patients’ problems within the context of their lives means that a large number of those who start their training here will stay on in the region.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .