On Friday 23rd February we held another brilliant event to celebrate the success of our students and to inspire others to even greater heights! The Excellence in Medicine Conference was held in the Great Hall of the Wills Memorial Building. We also had a record number (175!) of amazing poster presentations in the Reception Room.

Dr Santiago Rodriquez, the unglamorous task of marking

Students from all five years came together, as well as intercalators, to listen to presentations from those who had been shortlisted for a number of fantastic cash prize awards. We had three candidates for the Aungshuk Ghosh Prize for Innovative use of eLearning in Medical Education, together with Year 2, Year 3 and Year 4 eSSC students showcasing their work from 2016/17.

Students could choose from a selection of workshop sessions in the morning and afternoon across numerous local venues, including Browns Restaurant, The Botanist and UniLit club. In the morning we had 9 different workshops:

• Clare Taylor and student guests from Bath Academy – Quality improvement, research, taught course or clinical experience: what kind of eSSC suits you?
• Thanos Tsapas from AWP – Medical Student Psychotherapy Scheme and how to be a good doctor;
• Jane Sansom and student guests from South Bristol Academy – South Bristol SSC and Choice Opportunities – ranging from audit and research to developing online materials for peers and patients;
• Bee Martin from North Somerset Academy – ‘If only I had known then what I know now…’ Reflective writing: personal responses to experiences and events at medical school;
• Louise Ting and Laura Kelsey from Swindon Academy – Empowering Empathy via Patient Simulation: ageing suits, pregnancy simulator and visual loss simulator;
• Katie Wooding and Team from AWP – Exploring Mindfulness;
• Thomas Judd and Nicola Cook from Somerset Taunton Academy – ‘May the force be with you’ New approaches to learning: use of virtual technology in educational training;
• TEL Team – Creating innovative and engaging online learning materials for your peers: SSC and Choice opportunities;
• Philip Davies and Hannah Coakley from Gloucestershire Academy – Escape Rooms!

In the afternoon we had 5 workshops:

• How to deliver a great presentation with Nicola Taylor;
• How to apply for an Academic Foundation post with Hannah Gill;
• How to write a great abstract with Ellayne Fowler;
• How to write a great abstract with Andy Levy and
• How to write a scientific paper and get published with David Kessler.

Feedback was very positive from the workshops, and we would like to thank the workshop leaders for their fantastic input to the conference!

We were delighted to welcome as our keynote speaker, Rachel Ware, the GMC Regional Liaison Officer who gave a great talk entitled Celebration, collaboration – and regulation? Some reflections from the GMC.

Year 5 students had a special session just for them as this was one of the last opportunities for the cohort to hear some words of wisdom from Dr Andrew Blythe, MBChB Programme Director before they disappear off on their elective. Everyone was inspired by Callum Davidson’s incredible documentary film – he showed a short extract called Neurosurgery in Ukraine: a view of post-soviet medicine.

After the prize-giving ceremony with Professor Jonathan Sandy, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, we had a bit of a party to celebrate all that hard work with students and staff getting together over a glass or two…
If you’d like to see the photos, go to https://flic.kr/s/aHsmdyfTQi

So, well done to everyone who got involved and congratulations to our prize winners:

Aungshuk Ghosh Prize for Innovative use of eLearning in Medical Education

• 1^st prize: Lauren Jackson (above): The Little Medic: Using Instagram to aid medical students learning
• Runners-up: Joseph Salem: Video-based virtual patient journeys and Will Sutherland: Gait, Arms, Legs and Spine (GALS) examination e-tutorial

Year 2 eSSC oral presentations

• 1^st prize: Tejas Netke (above) : Robotic Surgery: the inevitable step in a technology driven society?
• 2^nd prize: Jeeven Patel: How should we utilise social media to encourage more organ donation for transplantation in the UK?
• 3^rd prize: Jan Chang: Should the National HPV Vaccination Programme be extended to adolescent males aged 11-14 in the UK?

Year 3 eSSC oral presentations

• 1^st prize: Emma Wright (above): Outcomes of Salvage Prostate Bed Radiotherapy

• 2^nd prize: Rosie Hughes: Prognostic significance of Mitral Regurgitation following acutely revascularised ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction
• 3^rd prize: Ivo Suchett-Kaye: Do resection margins in surgery for colorectal liver metastases make a difference to mortality?

Year 4 eSSC oral presentations

• 1^st prize: Carla John (above) : Prehospital Emergency Anaesthesia: 1000 cases over 10 years of service
• 2^nd prize: Ornjira Angkanawatana: Pain in palliative care: approaches to assessing pain in a low-resource setting
• 3^rd prize: Ananya George Moolepparambil: Risk of Coronary Artery Aneurysms in Kawasaki Disease

Intercalation oral presentations

• 1^st prize: Rhianydd Thomas (above): Are there distinct neural pathways in the human voice perception system that can distinguish between Multiple Sclerosis and Depression? An fMRI study
• 2^nd prize: Jessica Coenen: Exploring social media use in young adults: Genetic and environmental influences, negative affect and night-time Twitter use
• 3^rd prize: Jonathan Chan: A Comparison of Emollient Prescribing Formularies and Guidelines for Eczema, across Clinical Commissioning Groups and Local Health Boards in England and Wales

Year 2 Poster competition

• 1^st prize: Khadijah Zulakmal (above): Statins: importances and complications
• 2^nd prize: Rui Zhi Shum: Do respiratory virus infections in early life cause asthma?
• 3^rd prize: Arissa James: Nazi Eugenics: Made in the USA?

Year 3 Poster competition

• 1^st prize: Sarah Burd: Engagement of primary healthcare professionals in domestic violence and abuse training
• 2^nd prize: Rosalind Beckett: Rapid diagnostic tests for the diagnosis of malaria: friend or foe?
• 3^rd prize: Hollie Garbett: Growth Patterns in Preterm Babies

Year 4 Poster competition

• 1^st prize: Jagrati Chopra: HLA-DQ2/DQ8 typing for non-biopsy diagnosis of CD- is it necessary?
• 2^nd prize: Sumetha Rajendran: The Benefits and Drawbacks of Virtual Reality Based Training in Cataract Surgery: Perspectives of Senior and Junior Ophthalmic Surgeons
• 3^rd prize: Aysha Naz: Impact of stress echocardiography in patients with suspected and known coronary artery disease

Intercalation Poster competition

• 1^st prize: Nafeesah Shafiq: The impact of vascular status on the outcome of patients treated with a minor amputation for their diabetic foot osteomyelitis
• 2^nd prize: Miren Elphick: Is non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) of the whole genome morally permissible?
• 3^rd prize: Kimi Worsdell: Identifying Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia Causal Variants in Consanguineous Families