Involvement In Student Representation Facilitates Development Of Professional Skills

Objectives: Effective management and leadership, dealing with complaints and raising concern are professional skills students can develop by representing their peers to enact change in the learning community. Newcastle University’s Student Academic Representation system is an extracurricular activity designed to enable students to feedback, on behalf of their peers, to enhance learning experience.
After initial exploration of professional learning opportunities facilitated by engagement with Representation, workshops were co-created with students to enable Student Representatives to appreciate and evidence transferable professional skills developed by participating in this extracurricular activity.
Methods: Based on themes derived from data collected in previous student representative focus groups (Personal Skills, Experiences and Opportunity), workshops were constructed. The first workshop was designed to explore the meaning and importance of Representation and the process required to enable effective Representation. The second workshop focused on alignment of dental professional skills to experiences in Representation. Contribution from a dental professional provided information on opportunities for Representation after graduation.
Student Representatives across different years of the Bachelor of Dental Surgery programme took part in the workshops which were evaluated by a short questionnaire.
Results: During the workshops, professional skills were aligned to student experiences. With respect to obtaining consent, this appeared to be less relevant, however maintaining and protecting information and working with colleagues in a way that is in the patients’ best interests was aligned to actual experiences of Student Representatives.
Workshop evaluation relayed students’ further understanding of dental school and University processes and how skills developed in Representation would be beneficial to their career.
Conclusions: Academic Representation has potential to facilitate and enhance development of skills relevant to the dental profession. Future research will aim to determine if this training may also inspire students to take up committee positions in learned societies and dental associations, supporting contribution to the profession beyond practice.