Empowering medical students to develop competency in pharmacology is a key outcome of medical education, forming the foundation of safe and rational prescribing. Here, we describe the implementation and evaluation of a bespoke spaced-repetition pharmacology revision program for medical students. Previous research by our team has identified limited engagement in revision within the student cohort as a key barrier to competency. Incorporating student input, we developed an Anki™ deck of 1208 flashcards, spanning the pharmacology curriculum, for release to approximately 100 medical students at Monash Rural Health. The program integrates user difficulty ratings to develop a personalised and highly time-efficient revision schedule. Subsequent student evaluation identified key strengths as a, “comprehensive,” and, “well-formatted,” resource that was well accepted amongst students, with 76% of students planning to utilise the resource long term. These results demonstrate that spaced-repetition resources effectively engage students in consistent revision that underlies the development of competency.

Near peer teaching and mentoring is widely regarded as an important component of learning. Given that teaching is a significant part of the work of most doctors in the modern clinical setting, it makes sense to invest in and intentionally build learning about clinical education as part of a well-rounded medical education. In the current climate, post COVID, we have found that resources are limited and thinking outside of the box to give our students greater learning opportunities has been essential. In the CSSC (Clinical Skills & Simulation Center at Monash Rural Health Bendigo we currently involve our students, informally, in teaching their peers. As a group we decided it would be beneficial, for our students & program, to formalise this and propose it as a specialty rotation for year 5D students rotating at our site.