 Peer mentoring in ICT: UK
medical students sharing skills in developing countries
Eoin Young, Robert Melvin, Miriam Samuel and John Coombes.
Pre-Registration House Officers, International Health and Medical Education
Centre, University College London.
The International Health and Medical Education Centre (IHMEC) at
University College London runs an electives programme for final year
students with an emphasis on development issues and building links with
universities and students in developing countries. One of the recent
projects, carried out by four final year students in conjunction with IHMEC
and the Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education
(CHIME), was to assess the feasibility of peer mentoring in ICT to improve
medical students' skills — a method already used in London.
For about five years, CHIME has been running a mentoring project to
increase ICT skills among UCL medical students. Every medical student,
before starting his/her first term UCL is sent a questionnaire to assess ICT
use and skills. Data from these questionnaires are used to direct training
and to implement the mentoring. Those students with best skills are asked to
provide mentoring for those with the least good, using teaching resources
designed by CHIME.
More than one hundred fourth year students at Muhimbili University
College of Health Sciences (MUCHS) in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, were asked to
complete a questionnaire based on that used at UCL. Those students with the
least good skills were offered basic training sessions by the UK students,
covering World Wide Web, Email, word processing, file management and
spreadsheets. Teaching was carried out individually or in small groups,
using facilities at MUCHS. The UK students had no specific training in ICT
before going to Tanzania.
There was almost universal enthusiasm among the Tanzanian students to
learn about how to use ICT better and the emphasis was on the application of
skills to learning medicine and improving communication. The technical and
academic staff at MUCHS were supportive of the project and the main
difficulties in carrying it out were hardware and software limitations. With
one computer for every thirty undergraduate students and with only two
thirds of those working at all, and less than a fifth online, it is
difficult to access internet resources or to practise using computers.
On completion of the mentoring scheme, both controls and those who had
received tuition were asked to fill in another questionnaire and the results
of these are currently being analysed. There was a subjective, self-reported
improvement in skills but this is currently being assessed more rigorously.
The project has shown that is it possible and acceptable for UK medical
students to share ICT skills while on elective in developing countries.
Assessment of the effect of sharing skills is incomplete as yet, but
benefits in terms of friendships and improved awareness of resources
available were immediately apparent.
It is hoped that this model could be used in more settings and developed
so local students could be trained to provide ongoing mentoring. Further UCL
students travelling to Tanzania later in the year are likely to develop the
project further and with the expansion of the IHMEC electives programme,
more medical schools in developing countries could be involved. Peer
mentoring is a rewarding experience for UK students and, we hope to show, an
effective (and cheap) way of improving use of ICT by medical students in
developing countries.
Eoin Young, Robert Melvin, Miriam Samuel and John Coombes
Pre-Registration House Officers, International Health and Medical Education
Centre University College London.
For further information about the project see
www.ihmec.ucl.ac.uk
 and follow the link for
electives.
Email: eoinyoung@cantab.net
10 March 2004
This article is based on one published in StudentBMJ: Young E,
Melvin R, Coombes J, Samuel M. Elect to teach. StudentBMJ
2004;12: 36.
www.studentbmj.com/search/pdf/04/01/sbmj36.pdf
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