Pic: London Metropolitan University

A student at London Metropolitan University has been awarded the London Met Student Business Award for a new approach to surgical teaching and training.

Route 4 is designed to cut costs and make it possible for medical students to study at their own pace outside of the labs with a “take home kit.”

The programme includes online material, simulation tools and taught courses — most of which can be followed from home. This offers an alternative to the current approach which limits student opportunities to practice, needing access to sophisticated and expensive training laboratories.

Zahra Charaffdeen, 23, who created Route 4 together with two fellow students from King’s College, spoke of its aims:

“It’s basically offering cheap accessible training for everyone. There are expensive methods in the lab that students, doctors and surgeons find it difficult to get access to, so what we are trying to offer is to make it more affordable.”

Charaffdeen said that students and surgeons often lack the time to do the training, and this can cause problems when faced with real-life scenarios.

“The doctor who’s actually going to suture a wound might not have performed this task for the last year, not even once,” she said. “Others might not have done it before and they didn’t even do the practice before.”

Charaffdeen said Route 4 would create a “safer experience for the patient.”

Route 4 will receive £2,500 in funding, a market research report and space in the London Met Student Business Hatchery, part of Accelerator, London Met’s business incubator.

Interview with Zahra Charaffdeen included in audio news report