Brighton students volunteer to go the extra mile at London Marathon

The group of 15 student volunteers will spend the day as part of the official marathon medical team, joining physiotherapists, doctors, nurses and St John Ambulance staff in treating all kinds of injuries from sprains and stress fractures to exhaustion, cramp, blisters and even hypothermia.

Supervised by staff from the university's podiatry department, each of the students will see up to 20 patients over the course of the day, swapping their usual clinical setting for a tent and stretchers.

The university has been organising this opportunity for hands-on fieldwork in collaboration with the Royal College of Podiatry for more than 10 years now. Some of the student volunteers return year after year - and even volunteer independently through the Royal College once they have qualified.

University staff and students volunteering at the London Marathon before the pandemic

"Unlike any clinical setting"

Dao Tunprasert, a lecturer in podiatry in the university's School of Sport and Health Sciences, has been attending ever since she was herself a podiatry student at Brighton ten years ago. She believes that the marathon gives students unrivalled experience in acute care.

"This is unlike any clinical setting," she said. "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 the benefits continue long after the marathon is over, Dao adds. "I've had students tell me later that they've set up a podiatry service for their own local half marathon or 10k event," she said. "They're able to take this experience forward and forge new relationships and try new ways of working with their local communities."

Libby Rodriguez Burgos, another podiatry lecturer and former Brighton student, will be one of this year's supervisors. It is her third time at the marathon. "The whole experience is quite fun," she said. "You get to provide treatments in a different environment and the students are quite relaxed."

They also get the chance to work on more than their acute care skills, Libby says. "The students have to use a lot of interpersonal skills," she said. "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."

MSc Podiatry student Alex Sykes added: “This will be my second time volunteering as a student podiatrist at London Marathon, as 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.”

Dao Tunprasert treats a runner