2022 Volume 59 Issue 5 Pages 440-442
Introduction: When high school patients with cancer are hospitalized for long durations, most of them either stay in school or drop out. The SHAIKEN, a volunteer group of medical students at Nara Medical University (NMU), has been providing learning support to such high school students.
Methods and Results: The impact of returning to school on four high school patients (two with hematologic malignancies and two with solid tumors) who were admitted to the NMU Hospital between May 2014 and March 2021 and who received learning support was examined retrospectively. Although two of the patients repeated a year owing to insufficient attendance, none of the four dropped out of school.
Conclusions: Findings suggest that medical students providing learning support to high school students can help them return to school. However, it also became clear that there are some problems with the student volunteers’ support, such as not being able to count the number of days of class participation.
