The PiPs Summer showcase 2022

Posted on September 1, 2023September 4, 2023 by WBYHT

The “PiPs” peer learning conference 2022

A review evaluation by jess

Planning

As an organisation, PiPs seeks to build a community of like-minded individuals to share their enthusiasm for medical education and provide a platform for sharing of ideas, projects, and knowledge. The Covid-19 pandemic posed a challenge for PiPs, and like many other organisations, we had to quickly adapt from our usual working arrangements to incorporate new ideas and technologies to continue our work. After the lifting of Covid restrictions, HEE were keen for PiPs to continue our work and arrange a face-to-face conference.

Mishal and I (Jessica ) volunteered to co-leads the conference – we both had experience working with PiPs however this is the first time we had taken on the responsibility of organising an event. Our first challenge was to create a conference committee as many of our ‘veteran’ PiPs members were unable to contribute for varying reasons (moved abroad, CCT examinations are a couple of examples).

Although unable to commit to the conference, many of our established committee members offered support and guidance throughout the planning process and their experience and advice was greatly appreciated and taken on board. Luckily, we managed to recruit enough committee members, many of whom were brand new to PiPs and represented teaching fellows working at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) (my current work colleagues).

Our conference planning took place exclusively online, perhaps one beneficial outcome of the pandemic, which meant that most committee members were present at each of the meetings. We met approximately once monthly in the lead up to the conference and all decisions were made taking into consideration the views of the committee. Most of the administrative tasks such as contacting and liaising with delegates, organising tables and schedules, as well as the organisational tasks such as contacting the venue and suppliers and buying items required for the conference were undertaken by the co-leads.

The other committee members were mainly involved in discussions surrounding the conference, for example, deciding on potential speakers and how to organise the marking scheme for posters/oral presentations, but did not have any specific individual roles

The event

The PiPs Summer Showcase 2022 took place on Monday 20^th June, 2022 at The Studio, Manchester. This venue was chosen as we had previously held a PiPs conference at this venue so we know that it was a suitable space (with good food!).

Each of our committee members facilitated a table of delegates and their main role was to stimulate discussion and engagement, act as a point of contact for any queries or comments and ensure that all delegates were in the right place at the right time! Committee members were also present earlier in the morning to help with setting up the venue, assisting with registration and directing delegates around the building.

Learning from experience, we wanted to ensure that the oral presentations were spaced out throughout the day to reduce the amount of time delegates were sat down and passively listening. We managed to do this by incorporating our speakers in between the oral presentations as well as including a morning break in the schedule.

Our speakers were selected based on discussions and recommendations from committee members, previously experiences with certain speakers, and ability to talk about varying subject areas to create a diverse and engaging timetable. We were successful in achieving this and delivered 3 very different talks: educational theory, careers in medical education, and the use of social media in medicine. The speakers were well received and commented upon how impressed they were with our set up.

We received a healthy number of abstracts in 2022 (31) which meant we were able to offer presentation opportunities to many delegates: 9 oral presentations and the 9 poster presentations. 17 abstracts were accepted for poster presentation however several (8) presenters did not attend the conference although no apologies were received. All oral presenters attended on the day. A few abstracts (6) were rejected from the conference since they had no relevance to medical education, which was the only requirement we advised in our call for abstracts. The quality of presentations (both oral and posters) was of high quality and a pre-formulated scoring rubric was issued to our judges to aid their decision-making. A runner-up and winner were awarded for the oral and poster category.

highlights

new in 2022

careers fair

A new idea that we incorporated into the day was a careers fair. We invited representatives undertaking ‘F3’ jobs with some medical education involvement, both University and hospital based, some partly clinical and some full time education, to give a short presentation to delegates about their role and answer any questions. We ran this in a careers carousel type of event where each group rotated around approximately every 5 minutes so that had chance to speak to each individual representing a different job. The delegates asked questions about postgraduate qualifications, salary, clinical/non-clinical split and were exposed to several post-foundation jobs available in the North West.

“The delegates asked questions about postgraduate qualifications, salary, clinical/non-clinical split and were exposed to several post-foundation jobs available in the North West.”

the venue

A special mention must be given to the team at The Studio who provided a fantastic venue and kept our delegates and committee members very well fed throughout the day with plenty of snacks and a delicious cooked lunch!

our evaluation

PiPs has been running since 2017 sharing learning in peer teaching, teaching skills, community and education leadership. Here Jess shares her teams learning from 2022

whaT WENT WELL

We received lots of abstracts from delegates and were able to put together a full and diverse programme of oral and poster presentations.
The feedback received from delegates was overwhelmingly positive with many of those attending expressing an interest in engaging with the PiPs committee in future.
We managed to engage healthcare professionals involved in medical education outside of the remit of doctors for the first time.

WHAT WE LEARNT

Many delegates did not attend on the day so we were expecting and had catered for many more than attended.
The administrative undertaking of organising a conference was a heavy workload- HEE have agreed to support with this in the future going forward.
Perhaps the wider committee members could have been allocated specific roles to help support the co-leads in the planning phase of the conference to reduce the burden and spread the workload more evenly.

what i gained as a leader

The conference gave me the opportunity to develop my confidence and abilities in public speaking. Through my work in medical education at a University, I have become more confident in presenting to groups however the conference was the largest group of people that I have spoken to before and felt like a natural progression. I was surprised at how comfortable I felt speaking to such a large group of people as I had always considered this to be a weakness for me. Speaking at the conference has proved that I am capable of addressing a room full of people and I am encouraged to present in the future eg oral presentations whereas previously I would always opt for the poster option.
This is the first time I have been the leader of a group or taken charge of organising such a large event, usually I have been more comfortable being a team member. This role highlighted what I know about myself; I have many helpful qualities as a leader such as strong organisational and people skills however I find it difficult to manage others and perhaps this is why the bulk of the workload was done by the conference leads and not allocated to others. In future, I would like to work on my delegation skills and take a step back from specific tasks, taking on an overseeing role as the lead.
Organising and delivering a conference has shown me how much time and effort goes into such events. I have been a member of conference committees in the past however have held relatively minor roles and haven’t necessarily appreciated the bigger picture and wider elements that are involved. I think this will improve my engagement and appreciation in future as a team member of conference committees and also as an attendee of conferences.

next steps

Looking to the future, regular summer showcases and other training events continue to be our aspiration!

We are pleased that the University of Manchester is now delivering regional core teaching skills to our foundation doctors. To find out more contact PRiME at the Medical school of Manchester University

PRIME

Bolton Safeguarding SIM

Posted on September 1, 2023October 11, 2023 by WBYHT

Safeguarding sim

The Bolton Safeguarding simulation project is a unique and collaborative mission aimed at exploring safeguarding in children for junior doctors

Safeguarding children is an often overlooked aspect of paediatric care when it comes to training our juniors. Beyond standardised courses it can be challenging to find safe spaces to explore and discover this key topic.

The team at Bolton have created a novel safeguarding sim which they describe here. They hope to extend this opportunity to other trusts in their NW patch.

The Bolton Safeguarding SIM Project 2023

Some background, described here by Isabella and Imogen

Background

Child protection is a critical responsibility of doctors, the General Medical Council states it is a doctor’s duty to identify and protect children at risk of abuse. However, the current paediatric safeguarding education for doctors is inadequate. The Paediatric Safeguarding Simulation project aimed to improve the confidence and knowledge amongst junior doctors and promote escalating concerns to child protection services or appropriate agencies.

Foundation teaching sessions

Four simulation scenarios were designed by Isabella and her supervisor Deborah, to address themes related to the four main types of child abuse: neglect, sexual, emotional, and physical. Each scenario is based after real life experiences and aimed to reflect the complexities of safeguarding which challenge junior doctors. The project used volunteer leaders, which were recruited to include members of the whole multidisciplinary team. The sessions were delivered to FY1 and FY2 junior doctors working at the Royal Bolton Hospital last year.

The key message of this project is reflected in a comment from one of the participants; “paediatric safeguarding is a very difficult topic which I feel is often taught poorly at medical school. By framing it as simulated scenarios it helped to contextualise learning points about how to respond to each difficult scenario”. This project showed significant improvement in confidence amongst junior doctors when approaching difficult communication scenarios in the context of paediatric safeguarding.

Feedback

The sessions have received excellent feedback from both volunteer leaders and participants. All participants felt their confidence in managing paediatric safeguarding cases improved after one session. The project has since gone on to win the top prize at the NW Academic Foundation conference this year (2023).

Moving on…

We are continuing to deliver the project to FY1 foundation doctors at the Royal Bolton hospital this year.

We would also like to make the project regional using volunteer leaders at other sites to deliver the same session to foundation doctors.

If you would like to be part of the project going forward and help to deliver the teaching across various sites within the NW please contact the team via our contact page

PAL in the NW

Posted on December 13, 2021December 13, 2021 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

“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.

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 4^th 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.

Protected: To plan a showcase

Posted on April 6, 2021April 7, 2021 by WBYHT

Planning a peer teaching project?- Bethan

Posted on March 19, 2021March 26, 2021 by WBYHT

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.

Library guide

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

Jess- planning an F3

Posted on March 5, 2021May 27, 2021 by WBYHT

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

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

Posted on March 5, 2021March 5, 2021 by WBYHT

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!

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.

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.

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!

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

Posted on January 22, 2021March 19, 2021 by WBYHT

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.

PiPs team members

389

medagogy minutes in the conference

Total attendees

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Creating interrobang

Posted on January 11, 2021January 11, 2021 by WBYHT

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.

Find Out More

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…

Sign up for the next event

Interrobang

Very confident! Evaluating teaching using confidence 1

Posted on December 14, 2020 by WBYHT

Evaluating teaching using confidence

How many times have you been told “if you don’t evaluate it, it never happened?!”. Not only, it never happened, but how do you know how it went? How do you change things for next time?

How often do you get a paper survey after a “teaching” session at work? Can you remember what was on it? Lots of likert scales? (rate this on a scale of 0-5, like-dislike, agree-disagree). Or lots of free text?

Planning how you evaluate your teaching session should be an essential building block of your overall plan.

Thinking about who the learning affects (and how) can be a good place to start to think about evaluation.

Evaluating our teaching can be as simple as assessing what has been learnt or not and how this matches up with our plan for the learners. Millers pyramid is a simple way of thinking about this.

Millers pyramid

Confident?

Miller describes knowing and knowing how as the first steps towards doing. So how do we assess whether someone knows something after we’ve taught them it?

Confidence is a commonly used proxy to describe a learner feeling that they “know how” to do something.

Easy to measure?

There are plenty of examples in the literature of studies where they’ve sought an easy to establish headline measure of learning.

It’s simple and straightforward to ask someone if they have more confidence now that you’ve taught them what you’ve wanted them to learn.

Its an accepted measure

Confidence is something we all understand right? It’s a universal term.

At an education conference if you look through the posters you’ll be sure to find a good number of them have used confidence as the measure of the effectiveness of their teaching.

Self esteem

As teachers, we often want to build our learners up. WBYHT’s medagogy describes an intent to teaching that includes building a learners self esteem.

If we can demonstrate our learners have confidence then this is surely good evidence of this? We have bolstered their confidence.

Confident?

Now you’ve read this, have a look at the arguments against using confidence as a measure of learning

No confidence…