Group run by academics from University of Bristol Medical School with an interest in Medical Education Research. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not of Bristol Medical School or the University.
We are hugely pleased to share another amazing success for the fantastic Dr Grace Pearson, who is this year’s winner of the Association for the Study of Medical Education Trainees TASME Mentorship Prize.
The TASME Mentorship Prize is an individual award that provides resources for early career health professions educators to develop a mentorship relationship that will support their development as an educator.
Grace is this year’s winner of this prestigious award with her submission ‘Improving the care of older people in Zimbabwe through undergraduate and postgraduate teaching innovation.’ Grace shares that,
“this prize will help towards work with clinicians at the University of Zimbabwe Medical School, strengthening collaborative efforts to innovate teaching in geriatric medicine.”
Congratulations Grace, we look forward to hearing all about this exciting work in the future.
Trainees in the Association for the Study of Medical Education (TASME) is a career group of ASME. TASME’s mission is to foster interest and support development in medical education amongst early career doctors (up to 5 years post foundation training) – and early career allied healthcare professionals (up to 7 years post graduation).
This month’s highlighted Educator Profile is Dr Ed Luff
Ed is an Emergency Medical Doctor and Bristol Medical School graduate. His role is currently split between working as a Clinical Lecturer at Bristol Medical School and Speciality Teaching Fellow and Tutor at South Bristol Academy, based in the Bristol Royal Infirmary.
He is also finishing his MSc dissertation exploring students’ experiences and perceptions of using simulation as a method to teach human factors and non-technical skills, as part of his studies on the Health Professionals Education (TLHP) course.
We are thrilled to share that one of our BMERG Medical Educators, Dr David Hettle has been recently awarded one of the ASME/GMC Excellent Medical Education Award 2023!
Photo credit: Brett Garwood on Unsplash
The “Excellent Medical Education” Programme was established by ASME to supporting capacity building of high-quality medical education research. David is part of the team that has won this award in the postgraduate category for their submission: Exploring the experiences and perspectives of junior doctors in Entry-Level Medical Education Roles (ELMERs) that promote pursuit of a medical education career in the United Kingdom.
WINNER OF THE POSTGRADUATE CATEGORY
L-R: Lisa-Jayne Edwards (University of Warwick), Claire Stocker (Aston University), Julie Browne (Cardiff University), Cara Bezzina (University of Glasgow), David Hettle (University of Bristol)
We look forward to hearing more about this work from David and his colleagues in the future.
In this blog Dr Sam Chumbley and Dr Ed Luff invite you to The Inaugural CTF Conference: TICC GW4, hosted by the University of Bristol in collaboration with BMERG.
TICC GW4 provides an opportunity to see and present the valued work of Clinical Teaching Fellows (CTFs) from across the GW4 Alliance Medical Schools of Bristol, Cardiff, and Exeter. Building on the successes of last year’s Inaugural CTF Conference at the University of Bristol, which brought together CTFs from Bristol Medical School’s regional academies, we have expanded this year’s meeting, to invite presenters from the GW4 Alliance Medical Schools, Bristol, Cardiff, and Exeter.
One of the highlights of this year’s expanded interinstitutional conference will be a keynote from Dr Jo Hartland, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Education Director at Bristol Medical School. They will be presenting an account of their work in the field of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
There will also be presentation options for CTFs from the GW4 Alliance, in a variety of formats, including Research, Innovation and Opinion Pieces. Authors can choose to submit abstracts for consideration as a Showcase presentation (20 minutes), Oral presentation (10 minutes), Poster presentation (3 minutes) or for display as an e-Poster, which requires no presentation on the day. Opinion Pieces can also be considered for an Open Forum (30-minute) platform of discussion. There will also be a variety of workshops run on the day, to help develop delegates’ research and clinical academic skills.
All those involved in the teaching or support of medical students, be that clinical, academic, or administrative, are welcome to attend the conference. However, presentations will only be open to Clinical Teaching Fellows from the GW4 Alliance Medical Schools.
Registration is free and lunch will be provided. TICC GW4 will be held in Bristol on the 5th of April 2024. Further details will be sent following registration.
To register for the conference or to submit your abstract for consideration for presentation at the conference, please follow this link: TICC GW4 Registration
Registration will close nearer to the conference date.
The deadline for submission of abstracts is 12:00 on Friday 8th March 2024.
Have you seen our educator and researcher profile page? As part of our objective to ‘Innovate and Inspire’, this page is dedicated to showcasing not only the work of individuals working as educators and researchers in medical education at Bristol, but also a bit about their journey and their top tips for working in the discipline.
This month our featured educator is Dr Grace Pearson, a clinical lecturer and specialty doctor in Severn deanery.
Following her recent completion of a Ph.D. Fellowship in undergraduate education in geriatric medicine, Grace is actively innovating and evaluating geriatrics curricula on both local and national scales. This strategic approach ensures the continual enhancement of medical education in geriatric medicine.
To learn more about Grace’ Pearson’s work and that of other educators at Bristol Medical School, we invite you to explore their profiles on our BRMS Educator Profiles page.
The BMERG team have been busy in the last few months giving some of the BMERG pages a bit of a makeover to improve content and navigation around the site.
What is new on the BMERG pages?
Home page: We have redesigned our homepage to include new easy to follow links to find out more about our news, events, profiles and more
About page: We have added a new about us page to let you know more about BMERG mission, objectives and the current team
Blog page: We have added a search bar to allow you to more easily find content relevant for you as well as the blog categories list in the left hand menu
Events page: We have added a number subpage for sharing abstract calls and deadlines for interesting workshops, seminars and conferences along with the links to the relevant submission portals
Research projects: We have added a list of the latest publications and a link to to Bristol Medical Education outputs in the University of Bristol Research Portal
Want to hear more from BMERG?
Subscribe to the blog using the link in the left hand menu ->
BMERG publishes a new blog every Friday on a range of topics of interest to both medical and other educators involved in higher and postgraduate education, including publishing, building community, conference and event reports, professional development opportunities, hot topics in #MedEd and more.
You can search for keywords below, choose from the categories list in the left side bar or check out the latest blogs linked below
BMERG publishes a new blog every Friday on a range of topics of interest to both medical and other educators involved in higher and postgraduate education, including publishing, building community, conference and event reports, professional development opportunities, hot topics in #MedEd and more. You can search for keywords below, choose from the categories list in…
In this week’s top topic blog, Dr Fiona Holmes explores the challenges and realms of our minds in her blog on neuroeducation. “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” – Albert Einstein I’ve spent most of my career so far as a neuroscientist, but more recently my…
Congratulations to our BMERG and TLHP colleague Sarah Mclaughlin on her latest publication in the Journal Medical Education this week all about positionality in medical education research. Through her ‘when I say’ article she encourages “medical education researchers to reflect upon who they are and how they impact their research project during its various stages.…
In the latest publishing blog, BMERG blog editor Dr Sarah Allsop explores what research metrics are and if these are the only way for medical educators to show their impact. We are often told that we need to publish, we need to think about journal metrics, we need to build our research profile; but what…
In BMERG’s latest report from 2023 conferences, Dr David Hettle reviews the Developing Medical Educators Group (DMEG) Annual Conference which was held online in October 2023.
The DMEG* conference provides a great opportunity for early-years educators (students, CTFs, or anyone else beginning their medical education journey) to meet others, feel inspired by a conference and presenters looking out for those at the early stage of their educator career and hear about the work of the Academy of Medical Educators and its Developing Medical Educators’ Group.
This year, the DMEG Annual Conference 2023 once again took place online, to promote access to such a conference to developing educators from across the UK and further afield. While the conference’s focus is primarily at developing medical educators and those in parallel training (medical, dental, veterinary or other healthcare science), everyone in medical education continues to develop and so there was something for everybody.
This year, keynote speakers included Dr Phil Xiu and Dr Linda Prescott-Clements, sharing their stories and journeys through healthcare education They inspired attendees to consider their next steps and all the different avenues to pursue this through, as well as recognising that medical educators are the “bridge between skill and passion” in delivering education to students, colleagues and patients.
There were also a number of excellent workshops, focussing on multiple aspects of medical education, such as clinical education scholarship, tips and tricks of teaching critical appraisal as well as developing and delivering workshops, and considering developing your career as a medical educator. View the DMEG 2023 conference programme here and the DMEG 2023 abstract book here.
DMEG also hosts both oral presentations and video pitches during their conferences, sharing novel work and innovations from participating medical educators. This year, the University of Bristol was well represented.
Last year’s University of Bristol lead Clinical Teaching Fellows (CTFs) Dr Alice Middleton (in collaboration Dr Gabriella Agathangelou), gave an oral presentation discussing their new role as lead CTFs and the wins and challenges of building a community of practice amongst CTFs, ‘Herding Cats’. They were highly commended in the oral presentation category.
Former Clinical Teaching Fellows, Dr Jacqueline Roy and Dr Tirion Swart from the North Bristol University of Bristol Teaching Academy were awarded first prize in the Video Pitch category for their work on development of a podcast to support clinical years’ medical student learning on ‘Geri-Pods’, using Podcasts to Broaden Learning on the MDT’s Role in Practice for Medical Students. You can view Jacky and Tirion’s winning pitch on Twitter(X).
Screenshot from Jacky and Tirion’s DMEG video pitch presentation
Well done to Alice, Gabby, Jacky and Tirion!
It is expected that DMEG 2024 will again be hosted online, and would be a great opportunity for anyone from the University of Bristol or further afield to meet with other beginning educators looking out for what they’re interested in, seeing what is out there in medical education and look to meet some like-minded individuals from across the world. It is anticipated that the conference will be held early October next year again, but keep an eye on the links above nearer to the time for information and abstract calls.
* The Developing Medical Educators Group (DMEG) is a subgroup of the Academy of Medical Educators and aims to promote the development of early career educators including doctors, medical students, dentists, physician associates and veterinary educators. It is open to all early career educators who are Student, Associate or Full Members of AoME.
Did you know that November is Academic Writing Month? In this blog Sarah Allsop invites you to join this international initiative to commit to writing this November and build a writing habit for the future.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
What is Academic Writing Month?
Based on National Novel Writing Month, since 2011, Academic Writing Month (also known as “AcWriMo”) has run as an annual internet-based writing event during which participants challenge themselves to meet a self-set writing goal during the month of November. AcWriMo was set up in 2011 by Charlotte Frost (founder and director of PhD2Published). Several institutions now have annual writing months or ‘WriteFests’ and you can follow the movement on social media using the hashtag ‘#AcWriMo’ or ‘#AcWri’.
PhD2Published highlight 4 main aims of the month:
To think about how we write,
Form a valuable support network for our writing practice,
Build better strategies and habits for the future,
And maybe – just maybe – get stuff done!
How do you get involved?
AcWriMo is a personal journey and commitment to writing, so how you get involved is up to you. The concept is that you set yourself a writing goal and then can access advice and support from others also taking part.
There are 6 basic rules:
Decide on your goal – a paper, thesis, project etc.
Declare it – write it down to help to stay accountable
Draft a strategy – have a plan of how much time and when you are going to commit to writing
Discuss your progress – let others know you are doing writing month, again to help your motivation and accountability
Don’t give up – stay focussed to achieve your goal and don’t get side-tracked. If you miss a session you had booked for writing, that’s ok, but don’t let one missed session derail your whole commitment.
Declare your results – share your successes however small – every step is a step further in your writing journey, and importantly announce your final result. Why? The writing community benefits not only from sharing successes but also knowing and learning from what did or didn’t work and being reminded that, we’re all human!
Where can I find out more?
Lots of institutions have writing events during November. Here are just a few to get you started:
BMERG also offers short writing support sessions that run through the year as ‘Shut up and write‘ sessions for all University of Bristol staff and students. For more information on these please contact brms-bmerg@bristol.ac.uk.
Why don’t you make a commitment today to writing throughout November, and add it to the comments below?
BMERG is really pleased and proud to share that Bristol’s Alice Middleton, Carys Gilbert, Philippa Dodd & Isabel Rimmer, from our Gloucester Academy at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust have been awarded the Technology Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group Annual Scholarship Meeting Oral Presentation Prize for their presentation,
“Low-Tech, High-Yield; the utility of virtual patients using simple presentation software“
