Postgraduate Education
The Medical Education Department provides education, training and support to junior doctors working at Warwick Hospital. We have dedicated Education Centres which have a library, simulation and clinical skills facilities, as well as training rooms. We are here to support and help you during your placements with us.
Multidisciplinary simulation is well established for medical students, foundation doctors and allied healthcare professionals. In 2023 this was expanded to provide simulation training for IMT trainees as well.
IMT Clinical Skills Course
The Clinical Education Fellows (CEFs) offer support for simulated clinical skills training in 9 curriculum- and portfolio-mapped skills. This half-day course is completed in small group stations with a facilitator and is supported by higher training physician / anaesthetics registrars and consultants who bring a wealth of expertise and experience.
See the calendar page for upcoming course dates or for more information regarding IMT skills courses, feel free to contact us.
The following essential IMT skills are covered in simulated clinical skills:
— CVC insertion
— Lumbar puncture
— Pleural aspiration & chest drain insertion (Seldinger)
— Ascitic tap & therapeutic abdominal paracentesis
— Intraosseous (IO) access
— External pacing & DC cardioversion
F1 Teaching Programme
At SWFT we pride ourselves on delivering a relevant and contemporary teaching programme to FY1 doctors in the trust.
Alongside formal teaching from experienced clinicians, time is set aside in the teaching programme for FY1s to present interesting cases they have encountered. This provides an opportunity for constructive feedback on presentation skills from one of the education team, and the chance to develop teaching skills.
Throughout the year, sessions are set aside entitled ‘R&R’ in the teaching programme.
F1 Mentoring Programme
As an FY1 in the trust you will be paired with a Clinical Education Fellow as a mentor throughout your time at Warwick. Mentoring is a developmental relationship in which someone with more experience provides helpful guidance and support to someone with less experience.
How this works will vary from person to person, but your mentor will be expecting to meet up with you over the course of your four-month rotation.
Mentoring gave me the opportunity to talk with someone outside the team, to bounce ideas off someone who has ‘been there’ and understood how I was feeling. Meeting before my first on-call shift, I was so nervous but my mentor was lovely, spent time talking through what to expect and where to go to for help. The mentoring programme at SWFT was amazing, and one of the reasons I hope to return to Warwick when I am an SHO…
— former FY1 at Warwick
Previous FY1s have remarked that the mentoring programme provided:
Career goals and options
Tips on balancing work and life
Support from someone who has ‘been there’
Perspective of someone outside immediate work team
A chance to discuss concerns and guidance with how to raise these further
The programme also provides mentors with the opportunity to develop their own skills in self-reflection, communication and leadership.
Further mentoring resources:
This free module on e-learning for health platform takes around an hour to complete. This gives insight into how a medical mentoring partnership can work and some of the theory behind it.
This podcast discusses how to be a good mentor. Thankfully at Warwick we provide a mentor, their contact details and enable the mentors time to meet with you.
This page from the Royal College of Physicians gives ten top tips for successful mentoring.
PACES Teaching
The Clinical Education Fellows (CEFs) offer support to those preparing for PACES exams (Practical Assessment of Clinical Examination Skills – part of the MRCP assessment).
We use a WhatsApp group to provide real-time updates on PACES teaching sessions as well as a (confidential) place to share the location of appropriate patients to examine.
In the near future, we plan to develop the PACES teaching to evolve into fortnightly PACES level bedside teaching for all IMTs and any other candidates with a PACES exam date. Keep an eye out for further updates….
.If you are interested in signing up to PACES teaching, please request access to the WhatsApp group via our contact form, using your @swft email address.
IMG Teaching Programme
Opportunities to get involved
In the Medical Education department we are supportive of those working in the trust who would like to develop their teaching skills. This may be through involvement with medical student assessments, teaching in clinical areas or investigating simulation. Teacher training is available.
If you are interested in teaching, please get in touch.
The word ‘doctor’ means physician, and is derived from the Latin docere, to teach. All doctors in the UK are required to teach future generations of doctors, yet, unlike the preparation provided for their roles as clinicians and despite their expertise in what they teach, there has traditionally been a deficiency in appropriate teacher education in the medical profession.
—BMA. Doctors as teachers (2006)