August 2016 Intern Junior Mentoring Programme introduced into NUI Galway

NUI Galway has successfully completed the first year of a new intern junior mentoring programme, iJuMP. The mentoring programme was introduced by the West Northwest (WNW) Intern Training Network into the University’s School of Medicine in September 2015.

iJuMP aims to establish a peer teaching experience delivered by interns to final-year medical students to improve preparedness for clinical practice. The development of skills such as leadership, coaching and teaching to the interns was also an objective of the programme.

Dr Dara Byrne, senior lecturer in medical education and simulation at NUI Galway and intern coordinator WNW, said: “The peer teachers are neither professional educators nor experts. Essentially, they teach their peers or juniors whilst they themselves continue to learn by designing and delivering teaching sessions to small groups, act as mentors and give ward-based tutorials to improve awareness around intern training posts and the role of the intern. iJuMP programme has been hugely successful and beneficial to both interns and students and something that the interns should be very proud of.”

The iJuMP interns were selected and attended a two day ‘teach the teacher’ course designed for medical professionals, facilitated by Oxford Medical Training. Clincial tutorials were delivered over both semesters and were supported by two meet and ‘greet the intern’ evenings called ‘Your Event Your Future’.

Funding for the programme came from the Health Service Executive’s National Doctors Training and Planning Development Funding Programme.

To view testimonials from the interns visit https://vimeo.com/177832547. 

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