Podcasts from The Clinical Teacher

By examining what we do as clinicians and teachers, we were able to gather information about how we teach and how our students learn. As we reflected on this information within our small learning community, we began to realise the value of other people’s input as a great source of learning.

A course to introduce incoming third-year medical students to the subject of patient safety, to focus their attention on teamwork and communication, and to create an awareness of patient-safe practices that will positively impact their performance as clinicians.

A practical course on emergency telephone consultations (ECTs) was designed for the medical degree course at the University of Bern Medical School. During the module, each of the volunteer fifth-year medical students had to perform two simulated telephone consultations. Medical students in their first year of medical school acted as simulated patients (SPs), and they gave immediate feedback to the participants.

Teaching sessions were developed and led by a collaborative group of fourth-year medical and nursing students, under the supervision of teaching staff. Each session had different stations aimed at encouraging interdisciplinary discussion between students. A pre- and post-event questionnaire was used to determine students’ views on interdisciplinary learning and teaching.

140 medical students participated in a simulation-based activity focusing on teamwork, task delegation, role clarity and effective communication. Two similar clinical scenarios were presented, and either an HTS or an SP was used. Following each scenario, participants were surveyed on the realism of the simulation and the patient, and also on their self-assessed comfort and competence.

In the context of medical education, students are learning in a variety of physical locations. These various locations require different sets of teaching skills. This describes how as faculty educational developers we worked with clinicians to enhance their role as teachers within busy clinical contexts.

Men’s health has been a neglected area. Both their general health and their sexual health impact on morbidity and mortality. To improve this situation we need to educate men to attend their doctor and discuss their concerns. But, we also need medical professionals who are both competent and confident in initiating discussions and dealing with men’s concerns. Editor in Chief Steve Trumble, discusses this training need with the author Christine Fairbank, about her paper in the June 2011 issue of The Clinical Teacher: Men’s health: it is imperative to teach scrotal and rectal examination. Read the paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-498X.2010.00424.x/abstract

In the first podcast from The Clinical Teacher, Editor in Chief Steve Trumble talks to Professor Bob McKinley (Keele University School of Medicine, UK) about the article: 'Teachers: Improving the content of feedback', which he co-authored with Valerie Williams and Catherine Stephenson, and features in the September 2010 issue of The Clinical Teacher. Bob and Steve discuss the notion that feedback is the clinical teacher's greatest teaching tool and why British medical students are far less satisfied with the feedback they receive compared to their international peers. Read the paper: http://onlinelibrary.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-498X.2010.00380.x/abstract

In this podcast, Steve Trumble, Editor in Chief of The Clinical Teacher looks at the March issue of the journal, focusing on an article by Jon M Dickson, Richard Harrington and Michael J. Carter entitled: ‘Teaching clinical examination using peer-assisted learning amongst graduate-entry students’. Steve talks to Jon Dickson (Department of Biomedical Science, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK) about this article and learns more about peer-assisted learning. Read the paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-498X.2010.00417.x/suppinfo

Drs Peter Gallagher and Sue Pullon from the University of Otago in New Zealand discuss the challenges of providing educational development to clinical teachers across widely separated sites. Building relationships between the clinicians and the medical school by simply getting out there and meeting face to face seems to be almost as important as the content that is imparted. Read their paper at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-498X.2010.00421.x/full