From the Trainer
E-mail: richardson.judith{at}googlemail.com
Here we are – my first From the Trainer in this exciting new journal for Associates in Training. I aim, through these pages, to act as a virtual trainer and educational supervisor, to help support, stimulate and challenge you through your time in training. I will share with you the highlights of being a trainer and educational supervisor and my passion for being a GP as part of a rapidly evolving Primary Health Care Team.
This first issue comes at a time when those of you that started in August will be approaching your first review with your educational supervisor. Whether you are in hospital, innovative or general practice placements you should have been busy with Work-Place Based Assessment (WPBA) and populating your e-Portfolio with evidence tagged to the Curriculum Statements. Certainly my current StRs in both hospital posts and general practice have been busy chasing clinical supervisors and myself to complete the required number of assessments in time for the review. This has on occasions proved challenging to them – not only preparing for the assessments but also in persuading busy clinicians to find the time to complete the assessments. As a trainer I have been learning with them about these new assessments and the intricacies of the e-Portfolio (often accompanied with expletives!) and have been impressed how they and the other StRs have risen to the challenge presented to them. In these days of fast-paced change in Primary Health Care it is important as a GP to be able to rise to the challenge of change, to embrace it with enthusiasm and to be skilled negotiators. These are certainly the skills the StRs have been demonstrating competently if not excellently!
The review, however, is far more than checking that the required number of CbDs, COTs, mini-cexs, DOPS, MSFs and PSQs have been completed. It is a formative appraisal of where you are currently at in relation to the curriculum and the WPBA competencies, what you have achieved over the past 6 months, helping you to identify your learning needs and to plan how you will begin to address these over the next 6 months. As a trainer this is the joy of training; seeing your StR recognize the knowledge, skills and attitudes they have acquired over the past few months, sharing the highs and occasional lows of consultations they have had, helping them identify their learning needs and encouraging them to find ways to meet these needs. In short it is about watching them become reflective practitioners with the skills required for life-long learning, with the occasional nudge to keep them on the path.
So what can you do to ensure you get the most out of this first review? Make sure you record as much information as you can in the e-Portfolio and don’t forget to share it, otherwise your educational supervisor won’t be able to see and comment on it. However, simple lists of tutorials that you have had and books you have read will not help either you or your educational supervisor to build a picture of what you have achieved to-date and to identify learning needs. It would be better to include one or two pieces where you have spent time reflecting on what you have learned and more importantly what impact this will have on future patient care, than ten pieces that amount to a tick list of curriculum statements covered.
For example in this issue we look at chest pain. Perhaps you are in a hospital post where you are admitting the patient from a GP referral or in general practice having seen a patient with acute chest pain referring them up to hospital. In either case the patient is seen and assessed quickly and treated appropriately. You could just record this as a factual clinical encounter describing what happened and the role you played in this, demonstrating your knowledge and skills in treating acute chest pain. Or you could think about how the encounter made you feel; how the patient and his family coped with the situation and what more could have been done to help them; what role did other members of the primary health care team play in the care of the patient: how well did everyone communicate and what could be done to improve communication between secondary and primary care. By using the cases you encounter in your clinical practice and reflecting on them you will begin to build an e-Portfolio that is full of material to discuss at your 6 monthly reviews and bring a smile to the face of your trainer and educational supervisor.
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