Student Support
Topic outline
-
-
Various resources that the SSO team come across that we think may be helpful to students in supporting their well-being.
-
-
You can contact the student support office via email and arrange a meeting with a member or the team. We can offer support and/or signpost you to a range of more specialised services.
ACADEMIC LEAD FOR STUDENT SUPPORT – DR DOMINIC HURST
Email: r.d.hurst@qmul.ac.uk
STUDENT SUPPORT OFFICER – BECKY HUNTER
Email: rebecca.hunter@qmul.ac.uk
STUDENT SUPPORT ADMINISTRATORS - ZEHRA SONERMAN
Email: dental.sso@qmul.ac.uk
-
-
-
Starting university is a big step on an even bigger journey in your life, so there are bound to be many things you are unsure about.
There will be plenty of advice available once you arrive on campus, but Queen Mary would also like to provide you with additional guidance, resources and events before you start to help you to get ahead. Feel free to explore this site to learn more about what you can expect, what you can do to prepare, and hear from other students about their experiences.
-
-
Student Union - BLSA Building
Basement, BLSA Building, Newark St, Whitechapel E1 2AT
Multi-faith room
Royal London Hospital
Whitechapel Rd, London E1 1FR
Second Floor, Lift 5
https://www.bartshealth.nhs.uk/chaplaincy
- The Sanctuary is a Christian space welcoming those who wish to pray, seek a place of quiet or attend a service.
- The Muslim Prayer Rooms have separate prayer and ablution facilities for men and women. Toilets are on the ground floor.
- The Jewish Community Room is a space where people can relax, study or pray. Kosher food and refreshments are also provided. A PIN number to access the room is available from the chaplaincy or from the Stepney Way ground floor reception.
East London Mosque
82-92 Whitechapel Rd, London E1 1JQ
Muslim prayer rooms
We do not have a multi faith space in the Dental hospital so please kindly use any of the above spaces.
Please do not use any of the fifth-floor seminar rooms in the Dental Hospital as there are other designated spaces.
Charter House Square Campus:
John Langdon Down House
Ground Floor
Room 1.
-
-
-
We have published a blog today about available support for students in relation to war. It covers emotional, financial, academic and immigration advice.
-
-
-
Advice and counselling at QMUL have a well-being page with information about counselling, self-help and more.
The service is confidential and independent of us. We do not know if you have been unless you choose to tell us. -
The Disability and Dyslexia Service (DDS) will work with students with mental and physical health difficulties to put in place appropriate support.
-
-
-
As students, you may be the first to notice a peer who is struggling.
We are encouraging all students to undertake this training to help prevent student suicide.
-
London Nightline is an anonymous listening and information service run by students, for students.
You can talk to a trained volunteer about anything – big or small – in complete confidence.
We won’t judge you or tell you how to run your life: we’ll simply listen to whatever’s on your mind.
We are all students who have undergone extensive training and who understand that university life isn’t always plain sailing.
How can I contact you?
We aim to be accessible, so you can contact us in a way that suits you best. Our phones are still the most popular mode of contact, but increasingly instant messaging, Skype, and email are being used as ways to contact us.
We are open from 6pm to 8am every night of term.
Please contact us using the methods below.
Phone: (+44)207 631 0101
Email: listening@nightline.org.uk
Instant Messaging: via this link
Skype Phone: londonnightline
-
-
-
Taster Sessions – for the curious
Designed as a fun and informative introduction to mindfulness for the curious. Participants leave with an understanding of the theory behind mindfulness and an experience of mindfulness practices.
Stress Less Study – 4 week course
Designed for students this beginners course offers a firm introduction to mindfulness and core mindfulness skills. The focus will be on how Mindfulness can aid attention, memory, reduce stress and improve study performance.
First Steps Course - beginners
This beginners course gives a firm introduction to mindfulness and core mindfulness skills. It’s focus is on understanding how our habits inhibit our natural curiosity about ourselves and our world.
Next Steps Course – intermediary
This intermediate course is ideal for those who have attended a First Steps Course or the Stress Less Study Course and for already confident meditators. We will be exploring the classic Four Foundations of Mindfulness using core mindfulness practices. A great course for going deeper.
-
This is a brief document that explains mindfulness and has some links to helpful online resources.
-
Non-guided and guided mindfulness meditation acknowledges and pays attention to feelings and thoughts.
With roots in Buddhism, mindfulness meditation is widely practiced in a secular context.
It focuses on bringing awareness to the present and making observations with openness, curiosity, compassion and composure.
It helps recognise habitual thoughts and tendencies without judgement.
-
-
Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT for short, is a treatment that helps people build skills to effectively handle the challenges that life throws at them.
Overwhelming research over the past two decades has shown CBT to be the most effective therapy for a whole host of problems: anxiety, depression, OCD, anger, phobias, eating disorders, substance abuse, assertiveness, shame, avoidance, procrastination, and relationship problems, just to name a few. Because CBT teaches people to solve their own problems by learning and practicing new skills, CBT helps people stay well long after treatment is complete.
-
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) involves many helpful thoughts, practices and alternative perspectives that can change how you see yourself and your world for the better.
As well as aiding recognised conditions, CBT can help you to transform how you feel about yourself generally, and you can become more forward thinking and constructive with regards to past, present and future.
-
There are at least 10 common cognitive distortions that can contribute to negative emotions. They also fuel catastrophic thinking patterns that are particularly disabling.
Read this short document and see if you can identify ones that are familiar to you.
-
This short guide from The Charlie Waller Memorial Trust explores why striving for perfectionism can be unhealthy.
-
All areas of England have "Improving Access to Psychological Services" (IAPTS) programmes.
Each council in London organises these and they are free.
Use this site to find your local IAPT. -
Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings – after all, who ever said you were supposed to be perfect?
-
-
As Student Support Lead, I talk about assertiveness a lot with students who are struggling with their mental health.
Anxiety and depression can sometimes be linked to a sense of disempowerment and so developing assertiveness can help you take more control over your encounters with others.
-
w: https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/resources/looking-after-yourself/assertiveness
Our experiences of encounters with others can be improved by developing assertiveness skills.
Assertiveness works on the basis that you have as much right as anybody else to be treated respectfully and to have your opinion heard.
Many people suffer mental health difficulties because they feel others don't respect these rights so learning some skills to stand up and assert yourself could improve your sense of well-being.
-
Assertiveness is a key skill that can help you to better manage yourself, people and situations.
It can help you to influence others in order to gain acceptance, agreement or behaviour change.
It is the ability to express your opinions positively and with confidence.
Assertive people are in control of themselves and are honest with themselves and others.
-
-
If you or someone you know is in a crisis, please follow the guidance on this QMUL page.
w: https://www.welfare.qmul.ac.uk/emotional-wellbeing/help-crisis/
-
Whatever you're going through, a Samaritan will face it with you.
They are there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
You don't have to be suicidal to call.
Telephone: 116 123 - Free
-
Students Against Depression provides you with a calm environment and the resources to help you find a way forward - a website offering advice, information and guidance to those affected by low mood, depression and suicidal thinking.
-
We provide advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem.
We campaign to improve services, raise awareness and promote understanding.
-
-
-
Exams and other assessments are stressful times for almost all of us. A small amount of stress is helpful because it helps us get down to revising and keeps us alert during the assessment.
However, for many students, stress often becomes unhelpful meaning they cause themselves to become unwell, harm themselves or harm their relationships.
Below are links to several sites with ideas for how to prevent and / or manage unhelpful stress and anxiety.
-
-
This BDJ article was written by a dentist who was ultimately helped by the Dentists Health Support Trust to get back on track with his life.
-
-
If your life is in danger or if you have a medical emergency (including mental health) call 999
For further support information visit the QMUL Help in Crisis Page
-
-
-
Please read this guidance for all options for emotional support and informal and formal reporting processes when a student has experienced inappropriate behaviour.
-
If you experience bullying or harassment by another student, a staff member or anyone else at QMUL, please consider reporting it here.
Feel free to contact Becky Hunter or Dominic Hurst for a confidential meeting too.
-
This document is from QM HR department but relevant to students.
-
If you experience racism, please speak in confidence to Dr Hurst or Becky Hunter.
-
Experiencing racial discrimination and injustice can take a heavy emotional toll and trigger chronic stress, anxiety, depression, and racial trauma.
But there are ways to strengthen your resilience and protect your mental health.
-
-
If you have been raped, see the information on the Rape Crisis page about what to do next.
-
Domestic abuse is an incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading and violent behaviour, including sexual violence.
Domestic abuse can be financial, emotional, psychological, sexual or physical.
It can be perpetrated by an intimate partner but also by others in the home including parents or parents-in-law, children or siblings.
-
-
QMUL has a single portal to assist students with cost of living.
-
-
-
-
For example, dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
-
Students and Dominic Hurst speak about their diagnoses of different specific learning differences.
-
You will find the DDS screening questionnaire here.
If you submit this questionnaire, it will be reviewed by the Disability and Dyslexia Service (DDS) to see if you are likely to have one or more of dyslexia, dyspraxia or ADHD.
-
If you would like to get an idea of whether you might have dyslexia, use this checklist.
-
The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) has been the voice of dyslexic people since 1972. We are a membership organisation working to achieve a dyslexia-friendly society for all.
-
Lots of resources for adults with dyspraxia.
-
Struggling to concentrate, having too much energy or not being able to easily control your behaviour are some of the symptoms of ADHD. Find out more about ADHD and how to get help.
-
The site for and by adults with ADHD.
There is a page on this site for helping students with ADHD cope at university.
https://aadduk.org/living-with-adhd/university-college-issues/
-
Psychiatrist Lidia Zylowska shares how people with ADHD can manage their restless minds.
There is a podcast here:
-
I am a medical student, and I also have Autism – two things most people might not expect to hear together.
The phrase ‘doctor treating autism’ seems a lot more natural than ‘doctor with autism’.
-
We are a group of autistic medical doctors with a shared vision. At the time of writing this, our membership includes over 500 autistic doctors. We believe that autistic doctors bring a variety of strengths to healthcare, including an array of benefits for autistic patients. We adopt a neurodiversity-affirmative approach to our work, which centres around four core areas:
- Support
- Advocacy
- Research
- Education
-
An Australian site with resources about autism.
-
-
-
The SSO takes confidentiality very seriously.
Please read this policy to find out more.
-
-
-
This policy was approved by the Dental Executive, Chaired by the Dean, in October 2021.
Staff should only communicate with students using email, Teams and QMPlus Forum announcements.
-
-
-
-
This is used when, despite all efforts to support a student, their health has significantly impacts on their or others' ability to study.
Many students have physical or mental health concerns and only a very small proportion across QMUL will ever need to be subject to this. Where there are no professionalism concerns, this means students do not need to be subject to the Professional Capability process that the GDC requires.
When a student has done something deemed unprofessional e.g. in association with substance misuse, we would invoke this policy before referring to the Professional Capability Committee. This is because it allows the student to demonstrate that they have positively responded to the conditions laid out from this procedure and this is professional behaviour. We hope this will make the Professional Capability process more straightforward.
The key message here is to seek help early, take responsibility for your situation, make changes and avoid breaching any of the GDC's nine principles.
-
Professional Capability refers, in the broadest sense, to a student’s health and behaviour being compatible with the expectations of the General Dental Council. Please see the link below to the GDC's Student Professionalism and Fitness to Practise guidance.
When a student's health is impacting their studies but we are not concerned that any of the GDC's nine principles have been breached, we will usually use the QMUL-wide Student Fitness to Study policy as this does not refer to professionalism.
However, where a student fails to take responsibility for their health or condition, or they act in a way that breaches one of the nine principles, we are required to refer to the Professional Capability Committee (PCC), who invoke this policy.
This is because QMUL is required to certify its confirmation that a graduate from a primary dental qualification or professional dental care programme has demonstrated that they are fit to practise upon graduation. When a graduating student registers with the GDC, they will be asked if they have had any formal investigations into professional conduct and must say yes if they have been subject to a PCC.
The key message is to seek help early, take responsibility and avoid breaching any of the nine GDC ethical principles.
-
This guidance sets out the principles of professional behaviour expected of you during your training to become a registered dental professional. It applies to all students training to become a member of the dental team registered by the General Dental Council (GDC).
The important thing from the SSO perspective is that you seek help for any problems early so that they do not become professionalism issues. Principle nine is particularly relevant to student well-being issues such as drug use. So long as students take responsibility for their health issue, take steps to improve it and have not done anything to bring their professionalism into question, then they have not breached these principles.
-
-
-
This policy covers how staff are expected to respond when students are missing.
-
-
-
-
-
Frequently asked questions from students, with answers.
-
Frequently asked questions from students, with answers.
-
Frequently asked questions from students, with answers.
-
-
-
QMUL Careers and Enterprise has a specialist careers consultant on clinical careers, including dentistry. You can book a remote careers appointment with David Clegg by calling our careers front desk on 02078828533.
We can also offer you careers support with non-clinical careers. Please contact us by calling on the same number above, emailing careers@qmul.ac.uk. We have a lot of career resources on our website: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/careers/
-
Griffin House
http://www.griffincommunitytrust.org/accommodation/4591325530
The Griffin Trust offers reduced rent to students in return for them helping with Trust.
-
-
-
- Queen Mary has a range of other student support services such as, Student Enquiry Centre, Finance, Advice and Counselling, Disability and Dyslexia Services and many more that can be accessed from the link above.
- The “A-Z” of Queen Mary Support Services is available online at https://www.welfare.qmul.ac.uk/media/advice-and-counselling-service/international/student-advice-guides/A-Z-services-booklet_FinalDC3Nov-V2--web.pdf
-
-
-
PatientsLikeMe is committed to putting patients first. We do this by providing a better, more effective way for you to share your real-world health experiences in order to help yourself, others and advance research.
-
-
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Lankathilake about her role as a Speciality Dentist in Oral Medicine.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Benning about his role as a Dental Core Trainee.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Baidoo about her BDS journey and role as a General Dental Practitioner and a Clinical Lecturer.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Mahmood about her role as a Clinical Fellow at the GDC.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Fuller about her role as a Speciality Registrar in Restorative Dentistry.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Mondkar about her role as a Specialist Trainee in Dental Public Health.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Lawrence about her role as a Community Dental Officer.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Sufraz about her role as a General Dental Practitioner & Clinical Tutor.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Fitzgerald about his role as an Academic Clinical Fellow in Special Care Dentistry.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Zarringhalam about her role as an Oral and Maxillo Facial Surgery Junior Trainee.
-
Dr Amitha Ranauta chats to Dr Lewney about his role as a Consultant in Public Health, and Associate Editor of the BDJ Portfolio.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Razaghi about her role as a Speciality Registrar in Restorative Dentistry.
-
Dr Dominic Hurst chats to Dr Gakhal about her role as a Clinical Fellow in Paediatric Dentistry.
-
-
-
Being a compulsive gambler can harm your health and relationships, and leave you in serious debt.
If you have a problem with gambling and you'd like to stop, support and treatment is available.
-
Support for those living with compulsive gamblers.
-
National Gambling Helpline
0808 8020 133
-
An NHS-run service for people with compulsive gambling.
-
Gamblers Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other so that they may solve their common problem and help others do the same.
-
-
-
-
An interview with Dominic Hurst as part of the Meaningful Conversations series by Dr Riya George.
-
As part of the BLSA Mental Health fortnight, Dr Dominic Hurst (QMUL Institute of Dentistry) chats with Dr Catherine Marshall (QMUL Centre for Psychiatry) around the topic of mental health.
-
In this video, Dominic Hurst chats to Rory O'Connor, a Clinical Lead at the Dentists' Health Support Trust, about his role and how the DHSP and the NHS Practitioner Health Programme can help support dental students and dental professionals.
-
-
-
For guidance on how to register or edit a Profile ID and download the CATQR app, please see this page.
If you are told you already have a Profile ID when you try to register a new one, please search all your personal, NHS and college email addresses using "Profile ID".
-
If you experience problems using CATQR, please check this document.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
There are times in everyone’s life when things happen unexpectedly. Sometimes these unexpected events mean that our daily routines or plans are thrown off course, which may mean that we cannot do the things we intended to do.
As students, we might have a coursework or assessment deadline that we have every intention of meeting, but something beyond our control may mean that we can no longer meet that deadline. For example, we might break an arm playing football a few days before an important exam or coursework deadline. This is where the University’s ‘Extenuating Circumstances’ process can help.
The word “extenuate” has its origins in a latin word that means ‘to make thin’ and has come into the English language as a word that infers someone’s individual circumstances are taken into account when assessing their situation.
-
-
-
The Extenuating Circumstances task on MySIS allows you to register extenuating circumstance claims against assessment elements/modules where it is felt that illness or other circumstances led to non-attendance or non-submission. The task can be found on MySIS under its own section entitled ‘Extenuating Circumstances’. Any student registered for assessments will automatically have access.
- Log in to your MySIS account and click on ‘Extenuating Circumstances’ in the menu bar at the top of the screen. This will bring up a summary showing your personal details, details of your programme and various headings denoting different stages of the claim process.
- Click on the ‘New Claim’ button.
To help you navigate the claim process there is PDF 'Extenuating Circumstances Student Guide' which can be found on the MySIS Extenuating Circumstances home page.
In most cases Extenuating Circumstances claims should be made by students themselves, but it is possible for your home department to create a claim on your behalf if necessary. This should only ever be done on your request and based on evidence/self-certification details that you have provided.
-
-
-
When you start your Extenuating Circumstances claim on MySIS, the second drop-down box allows you to select the claim type as either ‘Standard Claim’ or ‘Self-Certification’.
(The claim type cannot later be changed - if you selected the incorrect type you will need to delete your claim and start a new one)
-
-
-
Please find below a link to help you calculate your finances and a way to help you have an idea of what your key outcome and outgoings might look like.
https://www.ucas.com/finance/managing-money/budget-calculator
-
-
-
Hi, and welcome to the Queen Mary Neurodivergent Society!
As a new society on campus, we have 3 main functions:
- To provide a safe space for neurodiverse people to come and relax, and interact with other neurodiverse people.
- To provide educative sessions about different forms of neurodiversity, their misconceptions, and how we cope with them.
- To provide career development opportunities to our neurodiverse community, and provide access to networking opportunities with people in all kinds of industries.
Whether it be through weekly socials, biweekly educative sessions and career sessions, external speakers, or conferences, we really hope you'll find a place for you in our society!
We have a WhatsApp Group chat that is used regularly both for general conversation and to discuss neurodivergence. If you would like to join, please email us at neurodivergentsoc@qmsu.org and let us know you would like to join with your name and phone number.
-