{"id":5620,"date":"2022-02-09T08:48:43","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T08:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/med.st-andrews.ac.uk\/medicine\/?p=5620"},"modified":"2022-02-09T08:48:43","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T08:48:43","slug":"saints-of-st-andrews-medicine-series-kicks-off-on-instagram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/saints-of-st-andrews-medicine-series-kicks-off-on-instagram\/","title":{"rendered":"Saints of St Andrews Medicine series kicks off on Instagram"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201cSaints of St Andrews Medicine\u201d #saintsofstandmedicine series was launched on the University of St Andrews\u2019 School of Medicine\u2019s Instagram page<\/a> to an impressive reception from staff and students.\u00a0 Inspired by \u201cHumans of New York\u201d<\/a>, the series features profiles of staff from different areas of the school and was created to break barriers of engagement and help students connect on a personal level with staff while showcasing the different pathways staff have taken to get to their current positions.\u00a0 The idea for the series was developed by Deirdra Farmer, Student Support and E-Learning Coordinator at the School of Medicine.\u00a0 Speaking on the inspiration behind the series, Deirdra explained that the Covid-19 pandemic and resultant remote learning measures impacted the sense of community students had with the school staff and medics.\u00a0 She thought of a way to bridge this gap through social media and decided Instagram would be an ideal platform, given its popularity with students.\u00a0 Deirdra shared that role modelling is important in medicine, saying \u201cstudents look up to staff like Alun [Hughes] and see this accomplished teacher and educator, but it\u2019s easier to connect if you know his personality outside of the school\u201d.\u00a0 She explained that students can be intimidated by the achievements of their teachers but showing that they had similar challenges as the students currently face could make the students feel more comfortable approaching teaching staff.\u00a0 Deirdra also expounded that she felt showing the teaching staff\u2019s personal lives and backgrounds would be a good way to tackle impostor syndrome many medics face.<\/p>\n

Dr Alun Hughes, Senior Lecturer at the School of Medicine was the first member of staff to be featured<\/a> in the series.\u00a0 The post immediately gained popularity amongst followers and is the School of Medicine\u2019s most-liked Instagram post to date. \u201cWe chose Alun [to kick off the series] as he had just been director of teaching and is also a module controller for our first-year students\u201d, Deirdra explained.\u00a0 In the post, Dr Hughes revealed that he went to Primary School at Kincardine and Secondary School at Dunfermline High, both in the south of Fife and that outside of work, he is a roller derby referee and has officiated over 400 games including both the Women\u2019s and the Men\u2019s world cups.\u00a0 With a lot of teaching being done online, it was necessary to show students that the staff are still approachable, and Dr Hughes believes this story was an opportunity for softer interaction, replicating the chats one gets before lectures or while bumping into students at the corridor. \u201cA lot of educators love the opportunity to engage and feel that close connection to the students and I feel this project is a really good way of achieving that and students appreciate that\u201d, he said. \u201cThere are a lot of surprises when students see elements of the story such as the struggles some teaching staff had to go through to get to where they are now, some students don\u2019t realise where the staff come from, I went to a high school down the road where some of them may have studied.\u00a0 It\u2019s nice to see that the staff come from a wide range of diverse backgrounds too\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n

Five stories have been featured on the series to date, including stories on Dr Predrag Bjelogrlic, Pamela Dobson, Dr Peter Williamson and Dr Wilber Sabiiti. Deirdra shared that more interesting stories will be published in the coming weeks with the series expected to eventually expand to include current students and alumni.\u00a0 Followers can expect features with staff from professional services and stories covering ScotGEM.\u00a0 Staff or students who would like to be featured on the series can send an email to mednews@st-andrews.ac.uk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Saints of St Andrews Medicine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cSaints of St Andrews Medicine\u201d #saintsofstandmedicine series was launched on the University of St Andrews\u2019 School of Medicine\u2019s Instagram page to an impressive reception from staff and students.\u00a0 Inspired by \u201cHumans of New York\u201d, the series features profiles of staff from different areas of the school and was created to break barriers of engagement…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":5621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,8,9,10,11,12,1],"tags":[251,290,374,375,409,845,993],"class_list":["post-5620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cmed","category-edu","category-igh","category-mackenzie","category-news","category-outreach-public-engagement","category-pbs","category-uncategorised","tag-deirdra-farmer","tag-dr-alun-hughes","tag-dr-peter-williamson","tag-dr-predrag-bjelogrlic","tag-dr-wilber-sabiiti","tag-pamela-dobson","tag-saints-of-st-andrews-medicine"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 11:49:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}