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Imperial College School of Medicine Students’ Union
President’s Report
A note by ICSMSU President- Alex Chippy Compton
Union
The 17 union officers of ICSMSU Exec have settled into their jobs and worked hard over for the start of term. Our Entertainments team delivered a fantastic Freshers’ Fortnight with 14 events in the first two weeks. We saw record ‘passport’ sales, with over 260 new students attending these events.
We have the BioMed Society Chair on our exec committee for the first time this year and everyone has worked to accommodate this and improve our representation in this area. There have been 4 meetings of the Executive Committee.
Events
July saw our Finals’ Fortnight for our graduating students. This included Summer Ball and Affirmation. Our Affirmation Ceremony which celebrated the class of 2016 as they recited the Hippocratic Oath. We had over 850 graduating doctors and their parents in attendance and demand for tickets was incredibly high. We are looking to move to a larger venue next year to accommodate this.
Our Freshers’ Fortnight was a great success. We budgeted for and made less money this year than usual in order to freeze prices for students. This may impact on the overall money raised for the sabbatical salary but we are looking to make this elsewhere throughout the year. We have worked to continue the work of previous years in ensuring the fortnight is inclusive for all and offers a range of events. All officers worked tirelessly stewarding the fortnight in addition to lectures and hospital placements. The new cohort appear to have settled in well and the feedback has been very positive.
Our 4th^ year students celebrated their Halfway Dinner on Saturday 15th^ October. This saw the St Mary’s Hospital Association award three prizes for Outstanding Contribution to Medical School Life. The recipients were myself, Mala Mawkin and Ali Ijaz. Letters of thanks will be appearing in the next issue of the Gazette.
Monday 25th^ October marks our 2nd^ annual Halloween RAG Ball. We have moved to a bigger venue and tickets have almost sold out. We look forward to hosting a sell-out Snow Ball at the end of term.
Upcoming Events: our events calendar is completely packed, featuring at least one ICSM event every week for the rest of the term. We are still looking to expand this to increase the range and variety of events we offer.
Shop
We have purchased a large amount of stock in order to receive bulk discounts. This year, we are trialling a price freeze across our merchandise. We have increased our range of merchandise on offer and are looking to expand this further.
Finances
We came into the year in a good financial position, with last year making enough to cover our sabbatical salary. However, due to unforeseeable costs, less profit was made than previous years to reinvest into our services.
Last year, a 3 year plan was made to ensure we can continue to fund our sabbatical officer without excluding students from our events. We have followed this however it does not allow for any extra funding of services or unforeseen costs. Since 2010, ICSMSU’s annual SGI has increased from £0 to £23000 in order to fund our sabbatical officer.
The addition of Sponsorship Officer onto our Exec has seen an increase in the sponsorship income we receive however this is still not enough to cover rising cost and the increase in sabbatical salary. Much of this money is being used to ensure student ticket prices do not increase.
Education and Representation
Last year saw a successful round of examinations. A reshuffle of FoM has resulted in a restructure of assessment administration but this has not affected students. A medical school wide curriculum and assessment review was launched last year which FoM and ICSMSU are consulting on. There is particular emphasis on the NSS results which reflected the variety of hospital placements and heterogeneity of student experiences across these.
All students in the medical school now have a free iPad mini to aid their learning. Our teaching has become interactive to reflect this and the FoM are working hard to introduce new learning resources and methods. Flaws in some of the software used has been highlighted and ICSMSU are working with FoM to address these and look for more appropriate software. All hospitals now provide students with Wifi access.
a more regular basis. The signatures of graduating doctors have become a feature wall and the signs have been put back up- a repeated theme across student consultation.
Welfare
We are looking to recruit a welfare committee to take forward our campaigns as this worked well last year. This will also allow our students to take ownership of many of the problems they face.
We had a very high level of resit support this year thanks to our Academic Officers and Welfare Officer. This gave many students the confidence and support they needed to pass their resits and progress in the course. We also contributed to the Personal Tutor training to ensure all our tutors are addressing the concerns of the students and are appropriately equipped to direct our students correctly on their issues.
We have just launched our new campaign for the year- Medics of Imperial. Similar to Humans of New York, this campaign focuses on current students, alumni and staff experiences particularly around mental health and its impact on an individual’s studies. Some participants have chosen to stay anonymous while others are putting their faces to their stories in the hope to break the taboo surrounding medical students and their mental health.
We are still working to address increasing house prices and financial hardship amongst students. This is an ongoing campaign. Last year we took around 200 students to the Citizens UK Copperbox Housing Mayoral Assembly. This is part of our pledge and work with FoM to address the concerns of our students.
Clubs and Societies
We have continued with our 121s between our Clubs and Societies Officer, Treasurer and all club chairs/treasurers. This has resulted in good engagement and support to all our clubs. Preparation for annual budgeting is already underway with external grant applications going out regularly and our Management Group Budgeting training happening in December.
Our clubs and societies had a successful intake of new students and are well underway with all their activities. Some of our clubs are expanding their opportunities to their members by participating in mass volunteering opportunities and academic and welfare support schemes.
Alumni
Our alumni association is doing very well, with around 200 sign ups from our graduating year. We are hoping to link alumni up to our career societies to offer medical speciality talks and seminars through the year.
Miscellaneous
The Junior Doctor Contract Dispute is still ongoing and continues to lower the morale of hospital doctors and our students. The students have been very supportive of the BMA and ICSMSU has continued to direct students to guidance and information around the dispute.
Similar to last year, ICSMSU Exec will be going on retreat in January to assess our progress, personal development and manifesto commitments. While a different group of officers, we hope to use this to reflect on some of the feedback from last year’s retreat and see where we can work to make further progress.
My thanks must go to the 17 incredibly Students’ Union Officers. It has been a pleasure working with them over the last four and a half months and they have all gone above and beyond in their service. Freshers’ Fortnight welcomed around 400 new students and the officers helped to settle them all in through our events. This simply would not have been possible without their hard work.
