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.
This week’s blog is from Dr David Hettle, hot off the recent announcement of winning the ASME/GMC Excellent Medical Education Award (postgraduate category). David tells us a bit more about the planned research project with colleagues across the country, exploring the experiences of doctors undertaking an entry-level medical education roles (ELMERs).
Image from ASME Awards page
Lisa-Jayne Edwards (University of Warwick), Claire Stocker (Aston University), Julie Browne (Cardiff University), Cara Bezzina (University of Glasgow), David Hettle (University of Bristol)
Introduction
More and more doctors take time out of clinical training, with many choosing to undertake teaching posts during years out, especially ‘F3 years’: time out of training after your initial standardised two years post-graduation1, the ‘Foundation Programme’. These teaching posts have a variety of names including Clinical Teaching Fellows (as they are locally in Bristol), Teaching Fellows, and Education Fellows.
With the increasing need for educators, these posts host a crucial place for doctors developing interest, skills and expertise in medical education as they progress in clinical and educational training. Therefore, there is need to understand the landscape of educational practice which these positions deliver and support the development of these current educators and future educational leaders.
Previous work reviewed the current landscape of entry-level education posts across the UK, finding over 400 positions per year in the UK in 20232, up from 77 in 20083. Though the numbers of these posts have increased, due to the variety of different titles used and the often transience of the doctors in these positions, research into posts is challenging. Importantly this means research into the quality of these posts remains under-studied.
Why does this matter?
This research holds great opportunity to really find out how early-career educators can be supported. Currently, there seems to be wide variation in the quality of posts, with some offering financial support for educational accreditation, others designated time to teach and develop skills in specific aspects of education.
On the flip side, they are others without any additional time, support or links to educational teams offered, yet still carrying responsibility for others’ learning. This work hopes to facilitate more information and some degree of quality control for early-career educational roles as occurs with other medical specialties, for example through their colleges and specialty societies.
The ELMER study
Building on our work undertaken alongside the Academy of Medical Educators (AoME), this new project through the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) seeks to explore the perspectives of current early-career education post-holders. We will investigate how different role qualities and opportunities impact their experience within medical education and, as a result, doctors’ inclination to pursue future teaching and training responsibilities once they move on from these posts (often back into clinical training).
To encompass all similar roles, our research team has chosen to use the term ‘Entry-Level Medical Education Role’ or ELMER as an individual’s first formal role in medical education.
We will use these doctors’ experience in their ELMERs to identify factors which promote formal teaching and increased educational activity and development. We have positioned the study in a pragmatic paradigm, focusing on the interaction between individuals (i.e. ELMER post-holders) and their environment, emphasising experiential research, and actionable knowledge. The study will use a mixed methods approach using a survey, followed by interviews, inviting any current ELMER post-holders to take part. Qualitative data will be analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, developing and telling the story of current ELMER post-holders.
Alongside the prior review of ELMER posts across the UK, the primary objective of this integral work is to offer insights that can inform policy decisions on how ELMER roles can support doctors in training to become future trainers, assessors, and leaders in medical education.
Why is this work so important to me?
As someone who has been a CTF in the past, but having finished that formal role wondered ‘where next?’, this work adds to the evidence for the development of a more formalised medical education career pathway, supporting educators of the future, alongside their clinical training. The current lack of such a pathway risks losing excellent educators after their ELMER posts, a risk which the field of medical education should not leave to chance.
Watch out for details of how to be involved soon if you are an early-career educator, ‘ELMER’ – we’d love to hear your experience! Drop me an email at david.hettle@bristol.ac.uk if you want to hear any more before then.
References
Church HR, Agius SJ. ‘The F3 phenomenon: Early-career training breaks in medical training. A scoping review’, Med Educ 2021; 55(9): 1033-46.
Hettle D, Edwards LJ, McCormack R, et al. (2023, Dec 4-5). A UK-wide review of Entry-Level Medical Education Roles (ELMERs) [Poster presentation]. Developing Excellence in Medical Education, Manchester, UK. https://www.demec.org.uk/category/demec-2023/
Wilson S, Denison AR, McKenzie H. A survey of clinical teaching fellowships in UK medical schools. Med Educ 2008; 42(2): 170-5.
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.
Welcome back to teaching and the start of 2024! In our first blog of the new year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect and celebrate how far BMERG has come since launching just six months ago.
We our hugely proud of the work that staff and students have put into this so far with:
36 blogs
6 staff profiles
4 publishing workshops
3 online writing retreats
3 journal clubs
1 external speaker
Our blogs have been viewed more than 800 times, with over 500 visitors from across the globe.
Looking forward into 2024 we can’t wait to share more blogs with you all on education research, teaching innovation, publishing, events, and much more. Make sure to subscribe to this blog to get all the latest from BMERG!
We would also love to feature more Bristol staff and students as blog writers so if you would like to contribute to the site please get in touch with the co-leads Sarah Allsop (sarah.allsop@bristol.ac.uk) and Steve Jennings (steve.jennings@bristol.ac.uk), or our shared mailbox at brms-bmerg@bristol.ac.uk.
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 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“
You can now follow Bristol Medical Education Research Group on Twitter!
Whilst there are of course many different social media platforms that offer ways of collaborating and learning, you will find on twitter most of the big medical education associations and publishers, along with many educators and researchers who share practice ideas through their content. So for now at least, twitter remains a great platform for connecting with the rest of the Medical Education community.
BMERG will also be regularly sharing news and events from Bristol through its new twitter account, as well as highlighting the work of other colleagues from around the world with ideas on best practice in Medical Education. Follow us at @BristolUniBMERG
Not sure who to follow?
If you are new to twitter, here is a list of a few great medical education feeds to get you started:
Teaching and Learning for Health Professionals, Bristol @TLHPBristol
