Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine (MD) Scholarly Intensive Placement

All Monash medical students complete a six-week Scholarly Intensive Placement (also known as a SIP) during the final year of their MD program. Scholarly Intensive Placements allow you to focus on a particular medical or professional practice issue, in-depth, by taking part in scholarly activities, such as analysing relevant literature, collecting data, reviewing policies, or developing new resources. Rachel Sultana talks about her experiences during her Scholarly Intensive Placement (SIP).

“My SIP project was a scoping review exploring the types of GP placements offered to students, their experiences (both positive and negative) and career outcomes of medical students on general practice (GP) placements. Some of the key findings of the project included:

• GP placement structures (location, duration, etc.) are highly variable across Australia, with it being left up to individual universities to decide what opportunities are accessible to their medical students.
• Passionate supervisors and student independence via parallel consulting lead to positive student experiences, whilst unenthused supervisors and observational/’pot plant’ experiences lead to negative experiences.
• Those who had a positive GP placement experience were more likely to express intent to pursue GP training in the future.
• Those who had a positive GP placement experience in a non-metropolitan area were more likely to express intent to pursue non-metropolitan practice.
• Significant gaps in the research and reporting of speciality selection and practice location beyond medical school following positive/negative GP placement experiences.

It is very exciting to know that my project is being submitted for publication next year. It is hoped that the information collected in this scoping review will help inform future research and systematic reviews and help guide future policy regarding medical student placement structures.

Although I didn’t enjoy the stress I put myself under over the six week placement (which goes by incredibly quickly!), it was very rewarding to stop and reflect once my data had been collected and analysed on how far the project had come. What started out as some ideas and questions, was now a collection of information that answered some questions and created some new ones, all within a short time frame.

It would be amiss of me to say it was all smooth sailing- it wasn’t. There were new skills to learn, the pace was steady throughout the six weeks, and I was working mostly in isolation at home (which certainly challenged my motivation and productivity!). In saying that, it was still very manageable and the skills I’ve gained from the SIP are going to be useful to my professional career moving forward.

My supervisor was supportive throughout my SIP, and despite her being based in Bendigo, I didn’t feel as though I was left out in Gippsland on my own. She let me influence the project idea so that it was aligned with my interests and was always a quick email or zoom call away to answer any questions. We had weekly zoom meetings to reflect on work done in the week prior, go over any drafts, and set new goals for the week ahead, which not only kept things on track, but kept the workload manageable (eating small bites at a time is a lot easier than eating the whole thing at once!).

For those about to undertake a SIP, if you go in thinking that it’s dry research, and it’s going to be boring, and you don’t want to do it, then sure, it probably will be unenjoyable. Be open minded and ready to give it a good go. Everyone has something they can learn and take away from the experience, whether it be specific research skills, publication processes, or even professional connections made when networking with your research team. Am I going to go on and be a full-time researcher? Absolutely not! But this SIP showed me that research can be done in many different ways, and in the future, I will opt for projects which I can do at a slower pace, part time, and with a larger team.

Find out more about Scholarly Intensive Placements