Engaging high schools for the co-creation of hands-on teaching resources for medical programmes

Most medical school physiology and anatomy laboratories house a substantial number of hands-on teaching resources, including silicon-based models, cadaveric tissues and pathological specimens. However, these are limited by solely depicting a single healthy or diseased state with no ability to show variations. This leaves tertiary educators limited in their capability to offer ‘hands-on’ examples of important disorder presentations. In recent years, high schools have undergone exponential growth in their employment of technology, and many now host engineering societies, information technology groups and STEM-based activities. Linking up with local secondary schools presents an ideal opportunity to engage school students in the co-creation of high-quality, accurate and hands-on resources that can be used within medical programme teaching. If structured correctly, this endeavour can be performed in a way that benefits both high school and university students.