814 If You Want to Go Far, Go Together: Student Perception of Joint Medical and Surgical Education Programmes

Abstract

Medical students have varied specialty interests which acts as a barrier to undergraduate engagement at specialty-specific conferences. The Tomorrow's Doctors 2023 conference, hosted at The Royal Society of Medicine, aimed to improve students’ understanding of current innovations across multiple medical and surgical specialties. The aim of this study is to determine student perception of a combined medical and surgical conference. The two-day conference consisted of 8 talks and 8 workshops. Feedback was collected following each day using online questionnaires. Each questionnaire was specific to the agenda of that day. Quantitative and qualitative feedback was collected on students’ perception of combined medical and surgical conferences for undergraduate students. Free-text responses underwent thematic analysis. There were 90 delegates on day one and 85 delegates on day two from 16 medical schools. Post-conference feedback was completed by 45 (50.0%) and 42 (49.4%) attendees for days one and two respectively. 82.2% of day one and 88.1% of day two respondents agreed that joint medical and surgical conferences were beneficial for medical students. Thematic analysis of post-conference free-text responses revealed the commonest themes for favouring joint medical and surgical conferences were ability to explore both medical and surgical interests (52.5%), supports career progression (27.5%) and practical application of knowledge gained (17.5%). Our feedback demonstrates that joint medical and surgical conferences are perceived as beneficial by current medical students. Future undergraduate conferences should adopt a combined approach to allow students to explore their varied interests and subsequently facilitate informed specialty selection.