News

Medical students get to the heart of the community

(19 March 2007)

There’s more to medical training than working with hospitals and GP surgeries – as one Durham University student found out on a recent placement.

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. Whilst on her placement Hazel helped staff in the drop-in centre and with the outreach service where SECOS take a vehicle out into non-residential areas where women of all ages work. 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 varying from charities, community groups and prisons to help them respect and relate well to patients and colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds. Hazel, originally from Kent, 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. “The degree is brilliant because it looks at the whole person in terms of their life experience. There is a social and environmental context as well as the physiological to consider. When I see patients in this situation in the future I will be able to better understand their outlook on life. “I used to take things for granted but this placement has made me more grateful and more open minded to people’s lives.” The medical degree, delivered in partnership with Newcastle University, was designed six years ago to respond to the health and social needs of the communities in Tees Valley. 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.”