Brain Leeds Undergraduate Neurology & Neurosurgery Conference
This year was the first year Leeds ever hosted an undergraduate Neurology and Neurosurgery Conference. This was funded by sponsorships from the Medical Defence Union (MDU), Royal College of Physicians and Leeds Neurology Foundation. The committee involved in running the conference included Dillon Vyas (President); Lorna Luo (Vice-President); Sarah Potts (Treasurer); Rhianna Kemish (Education and Skills Co-ordinator). The conference was organised with the help of Dr Bamford and our other keynote speakers including Mr Gerry Towns and Professor Trevor Batten. The purpose of the conference was to inspire students interested in careers in Neurology, Neurosurgery and Neuroscience, network and share knowledge.
General:
The general feedback we got from our delegates was that they enjoyed it and found it very informative and inspiring and would want to attend a similar conference again next year. The feedback we received go well with our aims of having the conference in the first place as we wanted to raise awareness of Brain Leeds as it’s a new society within the Leeds Medical School. We wanted to give students an opportunity to network with the Neurologists and Neurosurgeons to organise work experience in these specialities. Our other objectives were to inspire students and, through the student oral and poster presentations, give the 1st and 2nd year students an idea of what type of questions students have researched in the past and allow them to meet the supervisors that take on students for projects as well as showing the role of the students in these projects.
Keynote speakers:
Our first keynote speaker was Mr Gerry Towns, a reputable Leeds Neurosurgeon. Delegates particularly enjoyed the history and progression of neurosurgery over time side of the talk and the patient cases Mr Towns has been involved with.
Our second keynote speaker was Dr John Bamford, he’s a Neurologist from Leeds and created the Bamford Stroke Classification. Delegates found that Dr Bamford engaged very well with the audience by making his talk interactive by use of multimedia.
Our final keynote speaker was Professor Trevor Batten from Leeds Trinity University. Delegates found the talk very informative and gave them an appreciation of the scientific work that goes on in the background to improve our knowledge of disease and treatment in medicine.
Quiz:
We ran a Neuroanatomy quiz to give students an opportunity to get their hands on a national prize.
Workshops:
There were three workshops Neurology careers; Neurosurgery careers and Academic Foundation Programme in Neuroscience. We invited specialty registrars to run the workshops, the workshops covered applying for specialty training, being a trainee in the specialty covering the best and worst aspects and enhancing your CV towards the specialty.