We are excited to announce that the winner of our Medical Student Essay competition is Kieran Gharti!
Kieran is one of nearly 150 students from across the UK who took part, writing on the topic ‘What’s your most important learning point about ME/CFS?’.
All were required to complete Learna's FREE StudyPRN CPD module on ME, developed by Dr Nina Muirhead, who along with other professionals and people with ME, kindly volunteered their time and energy to review and mark the essays. A huge thank you to all our marking volunteers, and to all the students who submitted essays.
Kieran, who is in the third year of his MBChB Medicine degree at the University of Manchester, says:
“The module highlighted how ME is critically under researched, with our patients suffering the consequences - especially due to the lack of laboratory results it presents with. Nobody should be dismissed as healthy when they're battling real symptoms that just cannot be seen in a lab.
“I'm thankful for Dr Muirhead and the team at Action for ME for highlighting how clinically under researched ME is and offering the module to teach me and the other students about ME.”
Dr Muirhead states "It was fantastic to see such good quality work being produced by our medical students. They have all demonstrated in their essay submissions a desire to listen to and be kind and compassionate towards patients with ME. Most of the students also explained the significance of post exertional malaise and the concept of pacing. This demonstrates the major shift in attitude that can be gained by better education on the topic of ME/CFS. Huge congratulations to Kieran for a well written essay. Our current and future doctors should be able to recognise and diagnose ME and biomedical research has recently brought hope that we can look forward to a future when routine lab tests can be used to support the diagnosis of ME in mainstream healthcare."
We will announce our runners up winners next week, and publish their essays (Kieran’s is being submitted to a journal, so we can’t share that just yet). Watch this space!
Our Medical Student Essay competition was made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our supporters to our 2024 Big Give Christmas Challenge.
