In October 2007, Saving Faces launched an innovative and unique program – the Saving Faces Medical Student Training Project – to encourage more medical students to join our clinical research.
Nearly 200 enthusiastic students attended the first Clinical Research Training event in London. They were treated to a day of fascinating and informative lectures from leading experts including the President of the British Medical Association, the Cancer Research UK Professor of Epidemiology, the Deputy Director of the University College London Cancer Trials Centre and the author of the most widely read medical textbook in the world, Professor Parveen Kumar.
Feedback from the students were extremely positive including:
The event facilitated my desire to participate in cutting edge research and helped encourage my enthusiasm.
I thought this was an opportunity to exciting to miss. Clearly I was not the only one; at the Saving Faces training day in October I was surrounded by hundreds of other medical students who had traveled from all over the country, and, like myself were keen, motivated and enthusiastic to find out more. Through this opportunity we will not only be learning new skills in a new and exciting environment and getting invaluable experience for our future careers, but we will also be part of a nation wide network of motivated individuals, proud to be known as the first facial surgery student researchers.
Some of our young researchers are already attending clinics, observing operations and helping to collect vital audit data that will impact on the incidence and outcomes of oral cancer and improve standards of care in the future. The extra pair of hands from our student researchers will enable busy clinicians to undertake their own research, which is unlikely to be viable without student support, and will allow Saving Faces to assess the effects of treatments on quality of life.