A team of students will be taking part in the London Marathon next weekend – but they won’t be running the race.
Instead, the 15 volunteers will spend the day as part of the official medical team, joining physiotherapists, doctors, nurses and St John Ambulance staff.
They will be treating all kinds of injuries from sprains and stress fractures to exhaustion, cramp, blisters and even hypothermia.
The students will swap their usual clinical setting for a tent and stretchers and – supervised by staff from the university’s podiatry department – each is expected to see up to 20 patients next Sunday (23 April).
The university has been organising this opportunity for hands-on fieldwork in collaboration with the Royal College of Podiatry for more than 10 years.
Some of the student volunteers return year after year – and even volunteer independently through the Royal College once they have qualified.
Podiatry lecturer Dao Tunprasert, from the university’s School of Sport and Health Sciences, has been taking part ever since she was a podiatry student at Brighton herself 10 years ago.
She believes that the marathon gives students unrivalled experience in acute care and said: “This is unlike any clinical setting.
“You don’t have all the equipment. You don’t even have a normal patient couch. It’s just a stretcher on the floor or a plastic chair.
“Our students are used to treating marathon runners either during their training or after the event so to be able to see acute conditions right as they happen means that students have to provide a different kind of management.
“We also see a number of things that you wouldn’t normally see in a podiatry clinic, such as exhaustion, collapse and cramp, which adds to the experience for our students.”
And, she said, the benefits continue long after the marathon is over, adding: “I’ve had students tell me later that they’ve set up a podiatry service for their own local half marathon or 10k event.
“They’re able to take this experience forward and forge new relationships and try new ways of working with their local communities.”
Another podiatry lecturer, Libby Rodriguez Burgos, also a former Brighton student, will also be one of this year’s supervisors – and it will be her third time at the marathon.
She said: “The whole experience is quite fun. You get to provide treatments in a different environment and the students are quite relaxed.”
They also have a chance to work on more than their acute care skills, she said, adding: “The students have to use a lot of interpersonal skills.
“They are dealing with patients who can be really emotional or tired or they might be disorientated.
“They might need to fetch a patient’s bag or phone so they can communicate with their families, for example. So the students aren’t just treating a specific condition. They are helping the runners.”
Podiatry student Alex Sykes, who is studying for an MSc (master of science) degree, said: “This will be my second time volunteering as a student podiatrist at the London Marathon.
“I really enjoyed the opportunity this event gave me the first time round to work alongside other professionals in a multidisciplinary team, learn new skills from them and challenge myself in an environment that was very different to the usual clinical settings I had been used to.”
