One of two winners of the Peer Support award, Riki Houlden received multiple nominations for his extensive work improving the curriculum, delivery and promotion of surgical medicine, excerpts from which are presented below.

In his role as president of the Surgical Society, Riki went above and beyond in developing the role of the society in supporting the surgical curriculum. Rather than just using the society to promote surgery amongst those already considering a career in surgery, he identified a need to better prepare all students to get the most out of their surgical placements and developed an extra-curricular programme, Survival Guide to Year 4 Surgery.This involved penultimate and final-year student doctors introducing first-year clinical students to learning in the operating theatre environment, including small group teaching on scrubbing in and surgical handwashing as well as large group teaching around theatre etiquette. 

The feedback was outstanding and the programme addressed the perennial problem of how to help anxious students engage in the very alien environment of theatre. Riki demonstrated meticulous organisational and leadership skills, and was particularly supportive of the teachers, promoting reflection on their teaching experience. He himself reflected on the feedback comments and suggestions to improve his teaching and the course as a whole. The Clinical School decided to adopt this teaching formally into the core Surgical curriculum.

Beyond this, Riki has been exceptional in the way he has constructively and thoughtfully engaged with the Faculty, ready to come with solutions as well as problems. He undertook a survey of students working towards a surgical career, and the sometimes negative experiences of clinical students working in a surgical team were fed back to senior faculty of the School of Clinical Medicine. This feedback was difficult but important to hear, and changes are being made to ensure our students have a more positive experience of a sometimes "alpha male" and chauvinistic environment. His survey will shortly be published as a letter in the Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons, ensuring that these issues, not unique to surgery in Cambridge, are addressed more widely across the UK.

Riki Houlden is a sixth-year Medical student at the School of Clinical Medicine.