Author: WBYHT

PAL in the NW

Posted on by WBYHT

Peer assisted learning in the north west

Health Education England, North West, funded data gathering project

junior doctors are feeling compelled to create their own opportunities to practice core teaching skills

The North West

There has been a burgeoning of foundation doctor led peer teaching programmes in the North West in recent years. This demonstrates that junior doctors are not only feeling compelled to create their own opportunities to practice core teaching skills but that they also have a significant enthusiasm for delivering teaching.

All foundation doctors are required to complete a “developing the clinical teacher tool” (DCT) as part of the suite of work based assessments during foundation (Health Education England, 2020). But this is the extent of the requirements for gaining these key skills at this level.

Below you will find a map of activities across the region as well as some case studies of exemplar work happening.

PAL projects in the NW

 

 

 

Reported PAL projects in the NW

LINK TO MAP

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“PAL can be a useful vehicle for medical students and doctors to share the “stories” of their working experiences and learn ways of thinking about complex problems they will encounter.”

 North West Review

Peer learning

There is a wealth of literature available on the advantages of peer assisted learning (PAL) in healthcare settings. In learning we create cultural tools to help us make sense of the world, with language being the most powerful of these (Aubrey and Riley, 2018). PAL can be a useful vehicle for medical students and doctors to share the “stories” of their working experiences and learn ways of thinking about complex problems they will encounter. Vygotsky, the Godfather of social learning theory, identified a learner’s ‘zone of proximal development’, which describes the growth achieved by a learner with the help of other individuals close to them with, usually those with identified social or academic similarities. This has historically been taken as one of the fundamental tenets of peer-learning, given the assumption that we are likely to find more commonalities with our peers than formal teachers and faculty.

 

PAL in the NW

 

At intervals, since 2017, we have collected data from the North West PiPs showcase , foundation teams and through the Foundation forum in order to keep a record of what PAL activities are occurring around the North West.

These activities are limited to the data we can collect from these sources. This means that we do not have a complete picture of what is happening, but a snapshot of what is presented to us.

Many “formal” (with the support of administrators and foundation teams) and “informal” (those operating outside of foundation training) programmes are happening around the region. From journal clubs, to bleep training to regional projects. Foundation doctors are finding time, resources and energy, on top of busy clinical work to provide teaching and learning opportunities for their peers.

If you would like to share what you are up to with the rest of the region on the PiPs platform please get in contact.

Contact us!

Next, a couple of examples of PAL projects from around the region…

Ray Daniels

 

“Most medical students have little to no experience in these subjects before their placements and these placements have some of the largest amounts of new content/skills to learn out of all subjects.”

SUBHEADING

families and children, an online learning project

By Isla Kemp

The families and children teaching project at Preston came about from discussions with medical students about how they felt that they wanted some additional support with paediatrics/obstetrics. Most medical students have little to no experience in these subjects before their placements and these placements have some of the largest amounts of new content/skills to learn out of all subjects.

 A group of FY1s planned a teaching program with the aim of complementing the Manchester medical school family and child block. This takes up half of 4th year for Manchester medical students and covers paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology and GP. We designed a 12-week teaching program covering 4 sessions on each topic. Due to covid restrictions the sessions were planned to be over zoom.

We found running the program to be quite a steep learning curve. Coordinating and organising remotely proved occasionally challenging and we found attendance fluctuated with students attending in high numbers one week and then low the next.

To collect feedback we sent out surveys at the end of each session. To try and increase the numbers of students filling out feedback we would only send out slides/resources if they filled in the form.

Overall, we received positive feedback with students having found the obstetrics and case-based sessions the most beneficial.

Feedback suggested running all sessions as case-based and that we should increase promotion of sessions.

Going forward we are aiming to repeat the sessions again this year working with the head of medical students at RPH and some current FY1s to create an ongoing program of teaching that will hopefully run for years to come.

.

SUBHEADING

PAL at East Cheshire

By Antoinette Yoxall, clinical fellow

The Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) scheme at East Cheshire has been a valuable addition to the foundation teaching programme. Our peer led sessions allow current foundation trainees to teach and present to our colleagues within a safe and comfortable environment. It provides an opportunity for those who are nervous when teaching and presenting to work on their skills and increase their confidence, whilst allowing those who are already comfortable to add to their portfolios and gain valuable teaching experience.

“Our peer led sessions allow current foundation trainees to teach and present to our colleagues within a safe and comfortable environment.”

All sessions are observed by a senior colleague, providing the opportunity for personalised feedback and DCT forms for the foundation portfolio.

Teaching topics are decided by the foundation trainee themselves which has led to an interesting array of topics, including sports medicine, nutrition and prison medicine. A wide range of teaching styles have been adopted, including quizzes and cut-and-stick activities, leading to these sessions being some of the most well received in the programme.

I really enjoyed the peer led teaching sessions and found them extremely beneficial in improving my presentation and teaching skills.  

 

Planning a peer teaching project?- Bethan

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PLanning a Peer teaching project

Have an idea for a teaching project but not sure where to start? Bethan sets out a framework for planning below

Bethan

Foundation doctor teacher

 

After joining a teaching community in my FY1 year, I had been inspired by my fellow team members to produce my own teaching programme. Before starting my programme I was given several pointers to help me prepare, which I have summarised below.

 

 

Vision: 

What do you want to achieve with your programme?
What kind of teaching style do you see? In the pre-covid world this might have been simulation or small group teaching. Now it might be zoom break out rooms or webex meetings!

I’m interested in a career in Anaesthetics so naturally I wanted to produce a teaching programme focusing on Anaesthetics & ICM for junior doctors. My vision was for Core trainees and Registrars in the field to teach at a level that would be digestible for Foundation Doctors.

I didn’t want the teaching to be a repeat of our (often boring) medical school lectures and hoped to find engaging teachers that would make their sessions interactive. I chose to use zoom as this was a platform I was most familiar with.. and it’s free!

Planning

What do you need to achieve your vision?
Can you do this alone or do you need help with hosting the sessions?
Do you want a team to evaluate your teaching with you are can you do self-guided reflection?
Where are you going to deliver your teaching?
When will you deliver the sessions?
How will you recruit educators?
How will you advertise your teaching?

As this was my first teaching project, I didn’t want to bring in too big of a team in case things got a bit overwhelming. Having Mim and Nate from PiPs to talk things through with was incredibly helpful though.

I would highly recommend not doing all of the teaching yourself. Firstly, the workload would be huge! But more importantly, thinking about the benefit to yourself and your learners, you would likely gain more from experiencing different teaching styles in your programme.

 

 

 

Getting learners involved 

I compiled a mailing list of all of the NW Foundation School Administrators to help me advertise my project. I also set up a Facebook page which some people may pay more attention to when compared to emails! Additionally, I produced a flyer to send with my advertising emails and to use as my Facebook cover photo, to create a recognisable image associated with my programme.

 

 

 

Stakeholders

Who will your project affect? Who can support you in delivering it? Who do you need to make contact with before, during and after?

In terms of thinking about who I was targeting with my programme, I knew I wanted to aim this teaching at Foundation Doctors and later year Medical Students. It is important to research what your learners actually want to know about. I sent out a questionnaire prior to planning my programme to gauge if a) anyone was actually interested in attending the talks and b) if so, what did they actually want to know about.
From this information you can plan your teaching topics and find your teachers.

Having Nate (senior anaesthetist) to help me with my programme has been invaluable and I would recommend having a senior colleague or friend help guide you with your project if possible. Nate has been kind enough to both teach and supervise some of my sessions and give me some much needed advice at times.

A personal plan

How much time can you realistically devote to this project?
How much time do you think it will really take for you to prepare for each session?
Think about other time factors such as preparing certificates and sending advertisement emails.
Will you need help with the workload?

 

Evaluation

How will you evaluate the project? How will you gain feedback? And what specifically do you think it is worthwhile having feedback on?

Will you be doing any teaching yourself? If so – how will you evaluate yourself as a teacher? As a leader?

What will you do with this feedback to help yourself and others learn from your programme and improve?

Evaluation… you could argue the most important part of your entire programme!
It is a good idea to gain feedback for your programme and for your teachers. Have a think about what questions are actually useful to ask? What were you trying to achieve with this programme?
What have you learned about yourself as a programme lead?
If you are struggling with this part, there is plenty of help out there to help you think about this more.

To evaluate my teaching programme I sent out surveys following each session. I used open-ended questions with short answer text boxes to encourage more qualitative feedback, I personally find this more useful than rating scales.

I read through the feedback following each session and implemented any suggestions made to the following session – for example people were enjoying the level of interactivity so I asked my teachers to make their talks as interactive as possible. I also sent the feedback to the teachers following each session and offered to talk through the teaching with them afterwards.

Evaluation

 

 

Longevity

How long do you intend the programme to run for? do you want to set out a defined number of sessions before you begin?
Do you want to handover the project for somebody else to continue when you are finished? If so, how will you prepare for this?

 

I have been approached by an FY1 doctor who is interested in Anaesthetics and Med Ed who I plan on handing over the framework of the project to including my contacts and certificate templates. I’m hoping this means the programme can be delivered annually and continue to benefit junior doctors interested in Anaesthetics, but also giving someone an opportunity to organise their own programme each year.

 

 

I found that by answering these questions on paper gave me everything I needed to get started!

My advice would be to make sure you have all of your dates and teachers lined up before you even begin your first session to avoid any last-minute hunting! However, be warned that rota changes are inevitable and I would recommend catching up with your teachers about two weeks before they are due to teach.

In terms of “stakeholders”, having a contact in the relevant field can be extremely useful. In my case, I was preparing an Anaesthetics & ICM programme. Nate, one member of the PiPs team, is an Anaesthetics Registrar so has been an incredible help with finding colleagues who would be suitable to teach in the programme.

Finally, remember why you set out to do this in the first place – your learners! Find out what they want to know before you start. This might be in the form of a pre-session questionnaire or a question to your audience at the beginning of the talk. It is also useful to think about these things so that you can provide your teachers with a guide before they plan their teaching session.

I hope that this post gives you what you need to get started with your own peer teaching programme… and serves as an example of why you should get involved with PiPs (or a similar teaching community)!

 

An AMEE guide to PAL

 

AMEE published their guide to planning PAL in 2009 that is still relevant and has a comprehensive checklist that can be used to help you to think about your project in a robust way.

AMEE guide

Literature review

 

It never hurts to see what is already published on the area that you are planning on focussing on. This might give you some ideas or help you develop your own further.

Planning teaching

 

After you’ve planned your project you need to start planning your teaching sessions. WBYHT guide to planning might be a helpful place to get started…

GET STARTED

Consider evaluation

 

It can be confusing to know where and how to start with evaluating teaching projects. WBYHT have started to build some resources to help you think about this…

Get Started 

Evaluating your teaching-2

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Choosing the right tools

>>> Evaluating 1

Let us consider ourselves learners too. We have started to build our teaching practice and have an idea of what we are hoping to achieve. But how do we know if we have achieved it and how? Did anyone learn anything? Have we changed anything? Do we need to change?   

It is tempting to ask learners if they enjoyed sessions and found them useful but does that tell us if what we taught led to any learning?

 

 

Who, what, when, where, why and how? 

There may be many factors that influence how you evaluate your teaching. There is a reason why surveys are commonly used, because they are cheap, easy and quick to administer. If this is something you would like to do then read on for tips to think about this. 

The simplest way to learn about how a session went is to ask the learners. You might reserve a bit of time at the end of a session to talk to them about what they learnt or ask them to talk to each other.

Another easy to administer evaluation tool is peer observation. But it’s important to consider first what you would like them to observe.

write down as many things as you can think of that you might ask someone to observe in your teaching session.

 

You might consider yourself, your relationship with the learners, the learners interactions, the environment…

 

 

Surveys: Likert or not?

Constructing a survey is a quick and cheap way to get responses from a variety of people. But it isn’t necessarily easy. 

Likert scales of agreement are a frequently used tool but how much can they really tell us?

Consider this question:

Consider these situations;

  1. everyone responds with 5’s (all strongly disagree)
  2. mostly 3’s (neutral)
  3. mostly 1’s (strongly agrees)

What next? so you follow this question up with:

What (if anything) did you find useful about this session?

Did you really need the first question?

 

Tailor made

One size will never fit all when it comes to evaluation. You may want to adapt and tailor your evaluation towards what you need and want to know.

Common pitfalls

Drafting questions for learners and observers

Lack of clarity

“which techniques in these sessions today were the most useful?”

c.f.

“what did you think of the techniques used in session one?”

Double questions

“how did you find the session and what was most useful about it?”

 

Leading questions

“What did you think was good about this session?”

c.f

“what did you think of this session overall?”

 

yes/no and closed questions

“Were any of the sessions enjoyable?”

c.f

” tell us one thing you learnt at the session today (if anything)”

Chose the right tool

Where, who, and why will affect what kind of evaluation you undertake

Consider your questions

Careful wording of your questions will be essential for getting the most from your evaluation

Trial your evaluation

Take the time to trial any questions before you roll them out in a survey, observation form or interviews

Reflect and record

Ensure you make space to reflect and record your observations

 

Reflection

Confidence

It is common for new and experienced educators to use confidence and competence as a marker of learning. The following articles were written to help you consider this topic

Confidence…

Getting started on evaluating

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Evaluation and “feedback”

Getting “feedback” from learners (as part of evaluating our practice) is often embarked on as an afterthought. It can be difficult, particularly when starting out, to know what to ask and how. Beyond seeking feedback from learners, there are several other ways of gaining an understanding of what “went well” or we might “do differently”.

Take a moment to think about the different ways we might understand how a teaching session went. Do you have anyone you can discuss this with? 

What’s the plan?

Before embarking on teaching we make a plan and part of the plan is knowing what we want our learners to learn.

We should also consider how this learning will impact them and their future activities.

Why do we want feedback and to evaluate our teaching? consider everyone you might want to share what you learn with.

 

“Why do we want feedback and to evaluate of our teaching?”

Great evaluation is multi-dimensional

You have probably identified by now that there are multiple reasons why we might evaluate our teaching and a variety of audiences for this information. To gain the broadest understanding of how to develop we might use a variety of tools with a range of people.

 

know the “who, what, when, where, why” of your evaluation plan

 

The Who

  • Don’t forget yourself!: understanding how to develop your session(s)
  • your learner(s): did they learn what you wanted them to? how? do you need to adapt or change the session? Did they change as a result of your learning, did they do anything differently?
  • A supervisor or lead team: do they want to know if the project is successful, do you want to secure future support?
  • A wider audience? don’t forget about the potential to share your project more widely. Can others learn from what you’ve learnt?

Asking the right questions

Language is key

Whether you decide on peer observation, learner surveys, informal or formal interviews or any other method what questions you ask is vital. 

Refer back to the who, what, when, where, how. Evaluating learning part 2 considers the practical aspect of construction.

 

A matter of philosophy

How we choose to measure teaching and learning is possibly one of the most important decisions we will make. 

Many healthcare teachers starting out will approach evaluation of their teaching with their scientific hat on. They would feel most comfortable to measure everyone on a scale and then conduct some statistical analysis. This is based on the idea that there is one “truth” to be discovered and that we will gain the most from being objective. This is often referred to as a “positivist” approach.

Now consider a teaching session. Will everyone experience it the same way? Will it have the same outcomes and effects on one learner as another? Do you want it to?

Capture

 

Next steps…

Jess- planning an F3

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Planning an F3

Jess

In 10 years’ time, I envision that my working week will look something like: 2 days a week working as a GP (perhaps taking on a special interest) and 2 days a week working in medical education with a University – and most importantly, a 3 day weekend!

 

I knew that I wanted to take an F3 year to gain some further experience in medical education so during my foundation training; I have tried to gear my CV towards experiences which will improve my prospects in being able to secure a medical education based F3 post. 

“Many jobs which involve medical education will offer to support you in gaining a post-graduate qualification”

Job of the month

 

  • Qualifications? 
  • Setting?
  • undergraduate or postgraduate?
  • Money?

Thinking about an F3

 

There are a number of considerations to take into account when thinking about an F3 post – below are some of the things I have come across…

 

Post-graduate qualification

many jobs which involve medical education will offer to support you in gaining a post-graduate qualification; normally, this will be the post-graduate certificate in medical education.

As this is a University accredited qualification, there is a cost associated with this and different workplaces may offer varying degrees of financial support. Posts which are employed by Universities are likely to be able to offer more financial support than hospital trusts – research this in advance and don’t hesitate to email for further information before applying.

AoME accredited courses

Hospital-based/University-based

 

it is important to decide whether you want to continue working clinically or you are happy to take 6 months/1 year away from the wards completely. Medical education jobs are more commonly split 50/50 ward-based work and education and fewer posts will be available for a full time role in medical education.

BMA doctors as teachers

Pre-clinical v clinical

Full time roles in medical education are more likely to be aimed at the “pre-clinical” years whereas hospital-based posts will more likely be more senior medical students.

Think about your own personal interests and clarify the expectations of the role you are applying for beforehand – most job advertisements will outline this information for you but if not, email!

 

Wages

remember that doing less out of hours work generally means fewer pennies in the pocket on payday. Consider what wage is acceptable for you and think about this ahead of making any application!

 

 

Jess – My F2 teaching project

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Jess 

Foundation doctor teacher

 

As a keen teacher and someone who wants medical education to form a major part of my future career, I have lots of experience in taking part in other people’s teaching programmes but not necessarily the experience in the organisation of teaching. This year I decided to challenge myself and organised and took part in the delivery of my own teaching programme.

 

Hints and tips from an online peer teaching project

Here are some useful hints and tips I picked up along the way!

01

Preparation

recruit in advance! Ensure times and dates of sessions are clear from the beginning and send regular reminders (2 weeks and then 1 week in advance!) to prevent any last minute “drop outs”. Make it clear what is expected of the facilitators and any resources that may need to be created to support the teaching – I found it useful to send them my own example to work from.

02

Choose your platform wisely

as much of our teaching remains online for the time being, make sure to choose an online platform that you are comfortable and competent in using. As a complete technophobe, I had a practice run prior to delivering the first session to avoid any unnecessary mishaps during the live session.

03

Advertise to your learners

reaching your target audience is important in making sure you get the numbers at the teaching sessions. As my teaching programme was a surgical case based discussion series, I approached the surgical society associated with a local University so that I could use their social media platforms as a means to advertise sessions and reach my target audience. This also meant that the responsibility was shared between me and their committee as it is in their interest for the programme to be a success also!

04

Effective teaching practice

Addressing mutual expectations between yourself and your learners can be especially tricky during online teaching. Outlining the structure of the session is useful in informing the learners of what they can expect eg quizzes/breakout rooms etc. Setting out “house-keeping” at the beginning eg cameras on if possible, microphones off if not talking and revisiting this throughout the session if required can be helpful too. Ultimately, we are teaching adult learners and it is up to them to engage however we can provide regular encouragement to try and create a friendly learning environment.

 

PiPs 4.0- planning and evaluation

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PiPs 4.0 “Medagogy” 18.12.20

A PiPs report on the plannning and evaluation of PiPs 4.0- our one day training and community event for early career educators in the North West

Mim

trainer

ST3 peadiatrician- Wigan

 

Umair

Lead / Head gardener

GPST2 – Oldham

Nate

Trainer

ST6 Anaesthetics – Salford

 

Mishal

LEad / head gardener

CTF – MRI

 

Hakim

Lead / head gardener

CF – Oldham

 

Bethan

facilitator

F2 – Bolton

 

Brian

Facilitator

CF – MRI

 

PiPs

Designer

 

 

Background

 

PiPs activities started out as a one-off conference held in September of 2017. At our inaugural event, Foundation doctors who were leading or participating in peer teaching in the North West of England were invited to attend a day of teacher training. This free day of training was set up and run voluntarily by foundation doctors and funded by Health Education England.

Workshops in 2017 were delivered by senior educators on topics such as; presentation skills, cognitive load theory, project longevity, feedback and simulation.

The “new starter” or “inspiration” day has now run for four consecutive years. The aims and objectives for the conference have grown over this time as the team have evolved their own understanding of their pedagogical (or medagogical) values.

 

 

The joy of the day has always been in the buzz created by foundation doctors excited about education. An attendee told us in 2019 at our last face to face event-  “really friendly and positive atmosphere. Re-enthused my motivation to work on my teaching project and generally teaching on the wards” (attendee, September PiPs 2019)

In 2020, in the context of the pandemic, necessity drove the inspiration day online. Below is a summary of what we did and learnt.

 

PiPs values

Planning PiPs 4.0

 

2020 was the first year that we planned to deliver most of the content ourselves. Previously, only one or two sessions per day have been lead by the PiPs team.

We met several times to discuss our vision, objectives and plan for the day. Miro, an online team planning resource, was used to map out the day (see below).

Click to enlarge image

We started off by brainstorming sessions based on past successes; what we thought we would want the cohort to learn and what had been asked for in previous sessions

Initial ideas for sessions

Click to enlarge image

This was the first year we planned to run more than two sessions at once. We felt this might be a bit of a gamble (due to the technology) but we hoped it would give more opportunity to support attendees to make and seek their own learning objectives.

The final plan for the day…

Click to enlarge the image

This was the first time the team had used the programme Hop in. We chose it over other platforms as it enabled us to have participants actively involved throughout the day in various parallel breakout rooms. The team had experienced issues using other platforms in the past including zoom and another webinar software called webinarjam and we were keen to try something different. 

Hop in to PiPs…

Curriculum

 

PiPs aims to cover aspects of teaching theory, practical methodology as well as project planning for peer teaching and evaluation.

We acknowledge that our learners come with a unique experience of education and because of this we encourage them to identify their own learning objectives.

This year was the first year we offered a choice of parallel sessions.

 

 

 

An active medagogy

There continues to be a wide spectrum of approaches to medical education practices from those rooted in cognitivism all the way to those that acknowledge the complex social structures we operate in. 

At PiPs we endeavour to role model practices based in best evidence as well as explore the frontiers of education from health care and beyond. We endeavor to be learner-centered advocating active learning at all opportunities.

Technology

Despite the pandemic forcing our hand to technology to deliver PiPs, this necessity has brought many opportunities.

We have explored several platforms and are continuously learning and evolving how to deliver our Medagogy online.

We used Hop in to deliver the training day this year and aside from a few small hiccups this ran extremely well with good feedback from attendees.

 

 

 

Sponsorship

PiPs is made possible by the support of the North West of England School of Foundation Training & Physician Associates

 

 

Mishal- a PiPs “head gardener”

Mishal joined the team in 2019 when she was an FY1. 

 

“When I signed up to attend the PiPs 2019 showcase, I expected a day of powerpoint presentations and to leave having learnt a few things about medical education. In reality, I left with a new perspective about what medical education meant for me.

Empowered by this experience, I went on to design and implement a peer teaching project alongside a colleague who also attended the conference – something I didn’t have the confidence to do before. I felt the PiPs ethos was something that aligned with my attitude to how peer teaching should be: accessible, open and friendly.

 

 

Three PiPs conferences later, I am continually amazed at how much we can learn from other people. For me, PiPs is unique in its ability to instill a sense of community and the idea that education is a two-way street. I truly believe it to be an invaluable platform for people to network and be emboldened to develop and grow their own peer-teaching ventures.”

Evaluation

 

We aimed to evaluate PiPs 4.0 on several levels. Modelled on a community of practice, we use elements of Lave and Wengers evaluation framework to understand the “value” we create.

Below you will find quotes from attendees as well as figures and the value we have identified based on the CoP framework.

Really enjoyable, interactive, fun, insightful and useful for teaching, hopin platform worked well

 

Really enjoyable and useful day which has made me reflect on my own teaching style and how I gather feedback.

 

7

PiPs team members

389

medagogy minutes in the conference

31

Total attendees

7

separate sessions

Great and thought provoking think it will likely change how I teach

 

The day was brilliant from start to finish. Very much interactive and engaging which meant the day flew by. It has challenged me to reflect on my own teaching and has opened my eyes to how I should deliver a teaching session ( …and how not to #deathtopowerpoints )

 

Outcomes

 

Using Lave and Wenger’s evaluation framework we were able to identify value from the day from several aspects

>>> see here for the full framework.

01

Immediate value

Throughout the day, PiPs leads, trainers and event attendees recognised and reported instances where discourse was focussed on solving challenges for members of the community. For instance in “the confidence debate” one attendee discussed past difficulties of evaluating their peer teaching project and was supported to identify new strategies to tackle these.

02

Potential value

Lave and Wenger’s framework recognises that activities in communities may produce value that is not immediately realised. We surveyed our attendees on the day and over half of them told us that we had changed their perspective on medical education.

03

Applied value

Change in practice: The PiPs lead team have identified several areas where they might apply what they learnt from planning and delivering the day. We plan to survey attendees in the near future to assess any applied value for them.

04

Realised value- “improving perfomance”

We won’t yet be able to fully assess this but hope to report back after our next event and following further evaluation with attendees.

05

Reframing value

Whilst reflecting on planning and delivering the day, the PiPs team recognised the significant value created by being involved in this process.  As a result we have redefined what we value as success to include the learning we create as a team. As a direct result of this we plan to try and share these benefits more widely by expanding the team, notably to include other professions and more members of our target cohort.

Hop in was a very very good platform worked really well, best ive seen. Kept focus by doing short sessions and lots of breaks. Cameras on meant engaged throughout although daunting.

 

I think the PIPS events are welcoming and exactly what is needed for juniors doctors involved in medical education.

 

Get involved

We are always recruiting foundation team members and have plenty of events to get involved in the coming calendar year.

We are also actively recruiting members from other professions so please get in touch!

Sign Up

 

Creating interrobang

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Creating interrobang (?!)

Lewis

Anaesthetic trainee with an interest in medical education; co-founder the Clinical Teaching Fellows Forum, creator of the FRCA National Exam Teaching program, and Visiting Clinical Teaching Fellow at the University of Surrey

  

Jamie

Visiting Clinical teaching Fellow for Physician Associates at University of Surrey and co founder of The Clinical Teaching Fellows Forum

Roshni

Chief Mentor at Medic Mentor,Portfolio Medical Educator at GKT,QMUL,Lancaster university, University of Limerick and Brighton & Sussex Medical Schools and former NHS Neurological Rehabilitation Consultant.

Anisha

Highly specialist Speech and language therapist in neurorehabilitation. With a background in neuroscience. Current medical students clinical teaching lead for the neurorehabilitation service at St George’s hospital london

Nav

FY2 at St George’s Hospital. Interested in Medical education, Cardiology and eating other people’s food

Mim

Med Ed enthusiast, founder of “PiPs” (peer teachers in practice, North West England- HEE funded initiative supporting early career educators), paeds trainee and WBYHT founder

 

Jamie

 

Back in early 2020 an idea rose from the doom and gloom of cancelled conferences and deleted events. This idea was formed to that bring together educators under one roof, all be it virtually, and to be creative with our educational ideas, throwing out the obsolete, keeping the useful and heralding in the new and exciting.

In March 2020 I sent out a call, trying to find like minded educators who had lost out on presenting and hearing about fantastic projects and initiatives going on up and down the country. The result was amazing and a number of great educators and individuals who I had only met on twitter formed a working party. Only in 2020, the year that has seen virtual meetings become reality, could 8 educators from across the country, speciality and background form such a strong group.

This  small group formed and started to meet regularly on Zoom to hone our ideas and ensure we were creating an event that we all believed in. Debate within the group flowed and often there were too many ideas for us to take forward. This, for me, has been one of the key lessons that I will take away from this conference: how to create a group identity and idea when so many people in the group are such interesting people that their ideas are great too.

In all, one of the key messages that we all agree upon and felt was of such significance to create the conference was Inter-professional education. Why do we learn and train as individual specialities, and then expect to work harmoniously in tandem with a full understanding of each groups complexities and skillset? I have undertaken a number of simulation sessions, and most of these were other doctors portraying nurses, doctors and medical students. Conversely there has never been an emergency situation at the hospital when I have been surrounded purely by a group of fellow doctors. In order to work together, we need to learn together, and this is where Interrobang really starts.

 

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Mim

I have learnt so much working with Roshni, Jamie, Anisha, Nav and Lewis. It was particularly interesting working with a group that has never met in real life. Doing the so-called “forming, storming and norming” process online felt at times wonderful and others challenging. There were some lovely moments when the group rallied around adversity when one or two of us thought we might have to give it all up.

Communicating on text was particularly challenging, you forget that the team don’t know you well and your tone might be misconstrued. I gained a lot of new skills, memorably the process we went through scoring abstracts designed by Lewis and Jamie.

All in all it’s been marvelous to create something that feels really “us”. Cur!ous, diverse, creative and best of all inter-professional.

AomE

After spending a long time exploring various online platforms AoME stepped forward and offered to help us host the event. We knew we wanted to keep the registration fee to a minimum and with their help we could do this.

We soon realised that although it might be possible to run the event on a complicated tech platform it would take all of the committees attention to do so and it was more important to us to be a part of the event.

Twitter

We met on twitter and have done the majority of our advertising there.

Although at times tricky to coordinate all of us being involved in conversations (between busy rotas) there have been some brilliant moments…

 

 

 

 

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Interrobang