Using peer-assisted learning to teach basic surgical skills: medical students' experiences.

Standard medical curricula in the United Kingdom (UK) typically provide basic surgical-skills teaching before medical students are introduced into the clinical environment. However, these sessions are often led by clinical teaching fellows and/or consultants. Depending on the roles undertaken (e.g., session organizers, peer tutors), a peer-assisted learning (PAL) approach may afford many benefits to teaching surgical skills. At the University of Keele's School of Medicine, informal PAL is used by the Surgical Society to teach basic surgical skills to pre-clinical students. As medical students who assumed different roles within this peer-assisted model, we present our experiences and discuss the possible implications of incorporating such sessions into UK medical curricula. Our anecdotal evidence suggests that a combination of PAL sessions--used as an adjunct to faculty-led sessions--may provide optimal learning opportunities in delivering a basic surgical skills session for pre-clinical students.