Tag: community of practice

Conference Report: TICC 2024: The Inaugural CTF Conference, 5th April, Bristol

Posted on by sarah.allsop

The latest blog is a conference report celebrating the work of clinical teaching fellows across our region. Ed Luff reflects on this event and shares exciting plans for TICC 2025.

On Friday the 5th of April, the University of Bristol, in collaboration with BMERG, hosted TICC 2024: The Inaugural CTF Conference. TICC 2024 provided an opportunity to see and share the valued work of Clinical Teaching Fellows (CTFs) from across the region. Building on the successes of last year’s local CTF Conference for University of Bristol-affiliated CTFs, this year’s expanded meeting had presenters travelling from 10 organisations spanning Southern England, ranging from Surrey to Somerset.

The objectives of the conference were:

These objectives were excellently delivered through a combination of timetabled events on the day. This included two parallel streams of CTF presentations, comprising headline 20-minute showcase presentations, shorter 10-minute oral presentations and 3-minute e-Poster presentations, all with time for Q&A from the audience.

All 22 CTF presentations were extremely well received, and there was excellent engagement and discussion from the audience, highlighting the passion, interest and quality of the work presented. An intuitive electronic platform allowed delegates to provide feedback to presenters, which was shared with them following the conference. This approach to feedback facilitated further development of presentations prior to work being taken onto national or international conferences.

The day also included eight medical education-themed workshops, which attendees were able to choose from, across two parallel streams. These covered topics such as the future of undergraduate medical education, facilitating student-led medical education innovation, sculpting change, demystifying ethics, writing for publication, and the application of qualitative research to medical education. The day also included a showcase workshop presentation titled “From Innovation to Transformative Education”, highlighting how we can sustain and build on novel ideas and implement them into future practice in an educational setting.

One of the other highlights of this year’s expanded interinstitutional conference was a keynote address from Dr Jo Hartland, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Education Director at Bristol Medical School. They presented an account of their work in the field of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion and shared reflections on their medical education journey to date, including their move from clinical work into medical education, policy work, and leadership.

All those involved in teaching or supporting medical students, whether clinical, academic, or administrative, were welcome to attend the conference. The day saw 63 delegates attend from a variety of backgrounds including those in academic and professional support roles, clinical staff, and educational roles.

On the day, the conference had a fantastic atmosphere, with much talk and networking amongst colleagues and peers regarding teaching, collaboration, innovation, and reflections on the past year as CTF. Energy levels were high, and although the programme was busy,  the variety and diversity of presentations, workshops and talks was extremely well received.

Prizes were awarded on the day for the best oral presentation and runner-up, scored on the day by senior academics and the conference committee; best e-poster presentation, voted on by conference delegates; and best social media post, decided by the organising committee. The prize winners can be viewed on the TICC conference 2024 page.

For more information and insight into what happened on the day, search X (formerly Twitter) for #TICC24 to find all the social media posts. If you would like to find out more information about what was happening on the day, or full details of the presentations that were delivered, please do have a look at the conference programme is available here:

TICC 2024 Programme

We will also be sharing all of the presentations that were delivered at TICC online, so if you couldn’t make it along but would like to review some of the amazing work that was presented, we will add a link to this post and to the TICC tab on the BMERG blog page.

Finally, we are excited to announce that TICC will return next year in a new and updated format! The new and revamped Teaching, Innovation, and Collaboration for CTFs Conference 2025 will take place on Friday 25th of April 2025. So make a note in your diaries, with more information to follow soon, and start sharing your excitement online by using #TICC25.

Building Community: Spotlight on the Incubator for Clinical Education Research

Posted on by sarah.allsop

This weeks BMERG blog is a spotlight on the Incubator for Clinical Educator Research (ClinEdR). Hosted by the University of Newcastle, the Incubator is an NIHR initiative launched in 2020 to develop ClinEdR as an academic field.

Image (c) UX Indonesia on Unsplash

What is the Incubator?

The mission and aim of the ClinEdR Incubator is to support and promote careers in clinical education research through building a multi-professional community of practice. It extends across all health professions and aims to bring people together to develop their ideas, build collaborations and provide a network of developing experience in the field.

What is Clinical Education Research?

This is one of the most fundamental questions and tends to have a myriad of different definitions and terms including clinical, medical, and healthcare professionals education research to name just a few. Often the word ‘clinical’ can drive the idea that this sort of research must have a direct impact in clinical practice and thus can seem to exclude certain areas of research in education.

The team at the Incubator have tried to broaden this idea, embracing all sorts of different research that can and does have an impact on societal health needs by “enhancing the education, training and development of health and social care practitioners, and the organisations within which they work and learn“. They highlight a number of different areas in which individuals and teams may be undertaking clinical education research such as:

  • Pedagogical research
  • Planning and design of educational programmes
  • Regulation processes
  • Organisation context of learning, such as learning environments and workforce inclusivity
  • Learner experience and careers

They also consider that this whilst this type of research may have a direct clinical impact for patients it may achieve impact in other ways such as benefiting clinicians in their training, influencing health and education systems and through challenging and developing standards.

How can the Incubator help those who want to engage in Clinical Education Research?

The incubator is a fantastic place to start regardless of where you are in your ClinEdR journey. It offers a variety of resource and links via it’s website such as:

So why not take a look at their resources, find out who works in ClinEdR in your area and sign up to be part of the growing Incubator network!

You can learn more about the Incubator at clinicaleducationresearch.org/ on Twitter/X at @ClinEdResearch or email the team at clinical.education.incubator@newcastle.ac.uk

Conference Report: The Academy of Medical Educators DMEG Annual Virtual Conference, 4th October 2023

Posted on by sarah.allsop

“Communities of Practice in Practice”

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.

For information on joining DMEG and the Academy of Medical Educators visit: www.medicaleducators.org/DMEG and www.medicaleducators.org/Why-join-AoME

* 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.

Building Community: Bristol Medical School Qualitative Research Forum

Posted on by sarah.allsop

This blog focuses on the Qualitative Research Forum (QRF) led by Sabi Redwood, Jo Kesten and Heather Brant (L-R) from the Social Sciences and Health Team from Bristol Medical School. This informal group offers friendly support for anyone using qualitative methodology working in health research.

Sabi Redwood
Jo Kesten
Heather Brant
Photo by Firmbee.com on Unsplash

Starting to research in the qualitative space can be a challenge for healthcare educators, as many of us have come from an environment more heavily weighted in qualitative research training. The QRF serves as an opportunity for individuals to discuss specific methodological issues or work-in-progress with peers. The forum aims to be a supportive and friendly environment for individuals to present their work and obtain feedback. It also provides an email network as a resource for members to connect with each other.

The lunchtime meetings are relaxed and usually have a methodological slant. They provide an opportunity to discuss common issues and challenges in the application of qualitative methods and health-related research concepts, to develop collaboration and to foster new ideas. Examples of previous topics for discussion include: online data collection, data sharing, working with large qualitative datasets, process evaluation and rapid qualitative research.

The current conveners of the forum are Sabi Redwood, Jo Kesten and Heather Brant. Please contact us if you would like to talk to the group. If you wish to join the QRF, please contact Sabi Redwood. The email address for current members of the Qualitative Research Forum mailing list is grp-phs-qrf@groups.bristol.ac.uk. Resources for members can be found in the UoB QRF SharePoint site (UoB staff and PGR only).

The QRF meets between 12.30-13.30 once every two months, with the day of the week alternating to account for part time staff/students. More information and dates can be found on the QRF website.