In an interview at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital (KEMH), local medical student Neil Cattell, a member of the executive board of the Bermuda Medical Students Society (BMSS), speculated on the long-term importance of experiencing work at Bermuda's main hospital.

"If you're more invested in your home country and home hospital, you see yourself as being there for the long haul and you really put yourself into it," Mr. Cattell said.

The hospital calls itself proactive in courting Bermudians studying medicine overseas. As time goes on, the BMSS hopes to spotlight means for these students to take advantage of educational work opportunities in Bermuda.

Mr. Cattell, who is studying medicine at Hull York Medical School, began working in July in KEMH under its recently launched hospitalist programme.

"To give the background, it used to be that GPs, family doctors, would admit their patients and take care of them on the wards," Mr. Cattell said. "And it was somewhat difficult for them, in terms of logistics."

Two summers ago, KEMH developed a team of doctors working in the hospital, which among other features has allowed medical students like Mr. Cattell to work on the wards. The small number of hospitalist medical teams commonly includes one or two medical students per team.

The hospitalist method has caught on at hospitals worldwide as part of a general trend of streamlining operations. Bermuda Hospitals Board spokesperson Lena Ostroff described it as another means for taking care of in-patients. "It's really best practice now," Ms. Ostroff said. "They find that patients are better-served and happier when there are hospitalists dedicated to caring for them."

She also noted that Bermudian medical students returning to the Island enjoyed better opportunities for work at KEMH than many of their overseas peers.

Mr. Cattell, for example, draws a sharp contrast between studying on a course and the getting to work in the hospital. By sticking with a team over five or seven days a week and coming in on calls, he said, "you get that flexibility where it's not just a Monday to Friday thing. You can come in at odd hours; you're viewed as part of the team and encouraged to do so.

"People start to rely on you, asking what you think - not just from a testing point of view, but because they actually value your opinion."

Medical students elsewhere might find themselves paying to receive a similar course of practical hospital experience.

As BMSS executive board chairman Alisha Gabriel put it, "The hospital here in Bermuda wants people to come home in the summers, which is when most people work. They can provide you with employment - but at the same time, you're learning."

Describing it as "things they can't teach you in medical school", Ms Gabriel added that supervised work in KEMH helps keep the students' skills sharp over the summers.

As a medical student in 2008, Mr. Cattell participated in the hospitalist programme just after its launch in Bermuda. Initially the work was "shadowing" doctors, checking in on patients and helping with their care. "Last year I was in the emergency room," he said.

Now going into his final year of university, Mr. Cattell's studies abroad have covered "obs and gyn, muscular-skeletal, neurology and paediatrics. But coming back, you obviously see a bit of everything, which is good - it's a refresher."

For the past two weeks he had been assisting operations in the emergency department, where the work is by definition sudden and often acute. "In the hospitalist programme...it's long term care; the full team is responsible and you see different angles of the patient journey."

Mr. Cattell added: "In a way, it's practicing early."

Closely supervised, students are encouraged to get to know patients along with their conditions and their management plans, following them over months.

Ms Gabriel, who attends The Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, has worked at KEMH over the past four summers. She said: "In the early years of medical school, it's mostly theoretical work; you're not seeing patients so much. I was able to come home in the summers, and everything I'd studied in the books would come alive - it really gave me that drive. I knew why I was studying."

Mr. Cattell added: "The doctors always say that when you see a typical case in the textbook, it's just words. When you see a live patient, you'll think back to it the next time you see a patient on the ward - it reminds you powerfully of what you've learned."

Since medical studies for Bermudians necessarily involve off-the-island education, KEMH is eager to encourage these students to return to Bermuda once they have qualified.

"There's some general evidence that shows that where medical students train, they're more likely to go and work," Mr. Cattell said.

"Obviously, Bermuda doesn't have a medical school per se - but if students can come back, they can become more aware of what opportunities are available. That's one of the things we were hoping to do with the Medical Students Society, to find doctors who were willing to act as mentors or provide other experience."

Hospital-based experience, he said, has also made it easier to match students' interests or specialties with the appropriate available work.

The BMSS was founded in part to promote mentorship of Bermuda's medical students, Ms Gabriel said: to inform students of local support.

As Ms Ostroff said, "You need to get experience abroad, but at some point we want to encourage people to come back."

Medical students can contact the BMSS via its Facebook group, where further details are accessible. Although Society membership is currently restricted to students, the BMSS hopes to entice prospective students as well. For those who were unable to attend last month's BMSS seminar, another is planned for December of this year.