In recent years, the Myelopathy.org Student Society conducted a national education survey to assess Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy (DCM) education received by our future doctors in medical school. This was inspired by the top research priority identified by RECODE-DCM: raising awareness. There was an outstanding response from the community, with 751 students taking the time to respond to the survey.
Findings from the survey were recently published in the British Journal of Neurosurgery: “Degenerative cervical myelopathy education in UK medical schools: a national cross-sectional survey of medical”.
As expected, we identified deficiencies in DCM medical education, namely an absence of teaching in many medical schools and low student confidence in their knowledge of DCM.
While this may seem gloomy, there was some cause for optimism! Most medical students expressed a desire to learn more about DCM and a few medical schools performed exceptionally well in the survey.
Both represent opportunities to make substantial improvements in the years ahead!
None of this work would have been possible without the engagement from the medical student community. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to all of the respondents, and in particular the network of student representatives throughout the UK. As a token of gratitude, every student was entered into a prize draw. We are excited to finally announce our winners:
- Joseph Moneim
- Zachary Osman
- Conor Richards
- Louise Smith-Litiere
- Sophie Turton
Congratulations to each of our winners!
Good luck to everyone in their future endeavours, and please share your DCM learning with your colleagues and students in the years ahead.