There are 19 new faces around Tauranga and Whakatāne hospitals this summer thanks to an annual Summer Studentship Programme.

The programme, facilitated by the BOP Clinical Campus, gives medical students from across New Zealand an opportunity to study topics in the hospital environment with supervision and support from clinicians.

Student Andrew Weston has been placed at Tauranga hospital and is assisting with research into rates of secondary primary malignancy in patients with existing chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.

The soon-to-be fifth-year medical student, who has a degree in biomedical science, says his placement is a 'great opportunity to use both degrees to help with research in an area I am passionate about”.

Being in the BOP is also a huge bonus because his family is here now so he really wants to start immersing himself in this medical community, he says.

Students in this year's programme come from the University of Waikato, University of Auckland, University of Otago, and Canterbury University.

They are typically medical students who work on a five or 10-week project during their summer semester break. This year the students are completing projects in areas such as surgery, mental health, women's health and public health.

Several former summer students have subsequently found work at the Bay of Plenty District Health Board.

Eleanor Hughes (left) started working at Whakatāne Hospital as a junior doctor in late 2018 after being both a summer student, and medical student, at the hospital.

Whakatāne Hospital Senior House Office Eleanor Harvey completed a Summer Studentship with Obstetrician Dr Thabani Sibanda in the summer of 2017/2018 – at the end of her medical school training.

'I gained some excellent experience in an area of quality improvement; something which we have little exposure to at medical school, and I worked with a range of clinicians who were keen to see change in the quality of care provided at Whakatāne Hospital,” says Eleanor.

'Thabani was an excellent source of guidance and supervision. Also, I was able to spend a glorious summer in Ohope which is always hard to beat.”

Eleanor's project was to survey a range of clinicians involved in obstetric care and use a Delphi method, which is a research tool for finding consensus amongst a group, to create a set of quality indicators against which the performance of the maternity unit could be measured.

Her time in Whakatāne, as both a medical and summer student, led Eleanor to accepting a role as a junior doctor at Whakatāne Hospital in late 2018, and she has been there ever since.