Hello and welcome to our Summer Newsletter

I am so relieved that we decided to go “virtual” with our ASM this year. This gives us the confidence to plan for “no matter what” and try a new format to share good practice, network and learn. I look forward to “meeting with you” on the 8/9th July.

This year we  have tried a variety of innovations to keep in touch despite not meeting in person. I would like to particularly highlight our awards and our on-line events celebrating the recipients’ success as an excellent means of doing this and anticipate our ASME Honours event was both a celebration and opportunity for members to meet up. More on this later. 

We have just analysed the results of a recent members’ questionnaire which asked for your opinions on what you would like from being an ASME member and we will report on these as we work to achieve them.

I’m encouraged that one such idea was in support of mentoring and I’m pleased to report that we are at the stage now where our newly trained mentors will be allocated their mentees and I wait to see what the outcomes of this new initiative will be.

As I sign off I hope your summer brings you joy.
Best wishes,
Sandra 

Sandra Nicholson
Chair, ASME, chair@asme.org.uk

Our Mission, Values and Vision 

ASM 2021 - Disrupted Medical Education - challenging the norms of medical education

Our first virtual Annual Scholarship Meeting (ASM) takes place on the 8th and 9th July, aptly named ‘Disrupted Medical Education’. The conference programme is full of highly anticipated award presentations and plenaries, in addition to workshops and panel discussions. We hope to maximise on the disruption over the last year and offer an engaging and accessible virtual conference.

ASME is dedicated to shining a light on the research activity of its membership. As such, we have a number of Prestigious Oral Presentations (POPs) that will headline each of our themed discussions. Themed discussions will be contributed to by the authors of the abstracts aligned to that topic. The associated presentations will be available on-demand before and after the conference.

We are delighted that each of our Committees, Career Groups and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) will be hosting sessions at the conference. These sessions give our members the opportunity to engage in topics of special interest and network with like-minded colleagues. Topics include mindfulness, rethinking methodologies, and wellbeing, to name but a few. Our ERC and JASME committees are offering sessions on Support for Budding Researchers and Avoiding a Disrupted Medical Education respectively. With our TASME committee holding the final of their TIE Prize award and the EDC hosting A room 101 panel discussion about teaching post pandemic.

You can engage with our conference already by following our Twitter activity using the hashtag #ASME2021 and our account handle @asmeofficial. Ahead of the plenary, you may wish to review our recent Twitter question and answer session with Nisha Dogra.

Those keen to publish in our journals ‘The Clinical Teacher’ and ‘Medical Education’ will be interested in a session facilitated by the respective Editor-in-Chiefs, Aileen Barrett and Kevin Eva. The abstracts from this year’s conference, in addition to reflections and commentaries, will be published in a special issue of The Clinical Teacher.

We look forward to welcoming you all to the ASM.

Celebrating Success: ASME Honours, 24 June 2021

On 24 June we held an online ASME Honours event to celebrate the achievements of our award winners.  In 2020, we made 28 awards to individuals, teams and organisations, but due to Covid we have had less face-to-face opportunities to share news of these awards.  Therefore, the ASME Honours event was an attempt to redress that balance.  We invited 5 teams of award winners to each present for 10 minutes about their awards and what being awarded them meant to their teams. 

We focussed on our two newest award categories (Institutional Commitment to Scholarship Awards and Board Awards) and our largest award category (the ASME PhD studentship).  It was wonderful to see photos of the Institutional Award glass plaques being handed over at the three winning institutions [The Research Department of Medical Education, UCL Medical School; Undergraduate Medical Education Department, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHCT) and Scottish Medical Education Research Consortium (SMERC)]  and to hear about the projects relating to BAME student support and clinical reasoning that the Board Award 2020 and PhD studentship 2020, respectively, are supporting.  We also heard about what these awards mean to individuals, teams and organisations – in terms of internal and external validation and recognition, personal motivation, and feeling part of an ASME Community.  The session was recorded so, if you missed it and would like to catch up, you can access it here in due course. 

For more information on all our awards please visit www.asme.org.uk/awards.

ASME PhD Doctoral Grant studentship opportunity

Effectiveness of personalised self-regulated learning enhanced feedback using virtual patients on clinical reasoning among early medical and physician associate students

(Reference: 001/ASME/OCT21)
 

Edge Hill University are pleased to announce the availability of a Doctoral Studentship from 1 October 2021 funded with an annual Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) PhD / Doctoral Grant.

ASME seeks to promote high quality research into medical education, provide opportunities for developing medical educators and disseminate good evidence based educational practice

All research students are registered in the University’s Graduate School and housed in the faculty or department that is most appropriate for the project on which they are working. The successful candidate in this case will be housed in the Faculty of Health, Social Care and Medicine.

The project will investigate the effectiveness of personalised self-regulated learning enhanced feedback using virtual patients on clinical reasoning among early medical and physician associate students. Supervision will likely be provided by Professor John Sandars and Professor Jeremy Brown at Edge Hill University and by Dr Rakesh Patel and Dr Christopher Madan at the University of Nottingham.  The student will spend their time at Edge Hill University.

Edge Hill University are keen to encourage applications from a wide range of students and particularly welcome those currently underrepresented in doctoral student cohorts.

To see the full description on the Edge Hill website, please click HERE

ASME Mentorship Pilot Programme: Update

The mentorship pilot is progressing. To recap, we are piloting processes for mentor recruitment, mentor training, developing a mentor directory, the process whereby members can ask for mentorship and how we pair mentor-mentee dyads. So far, we have delivered the first mentor training course in conjunction with Doctors Training. This was facilitated by Sarah Johnson, a medical manager, and participant feedback has been gratifyingly positive. As I write, Jenny Ogg and the office are putting the finishing touches to the Mentor Directory and to the Mentorship Request Form. The next stage will be to pilot establishing Mentor-Mentee dyads and to get the important bit started: active mentorship.

I must emphasize that this is a pilot. Our capacity is still limited. Consequently, we are limiting the invitation for apply for mentorship to the most active members of the Association which we have defined as leaders of the SIGs, members of the Education Research and Educator Development Committees, JASME and TASME committee members and members of the Board. However, the board has agreed to holding two more mentor training courses. The first will be on 7th and 19th October (two half-days) and we hope to confirm dates in November soon.

I encourage all members at all stages of their career and especially members from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds to consider applying for the mentor course: ‘near peer’ mentors have as much to offer as ‘senior’ colleagues. However, we are aware that senior colleagues will also want mentoring and we all are someone’s near peer. Please think about applying: its only by us all working together that we can make this a success.

Bob McKinley
Director for Career Groups

#MedEdForum: what are they all about?

A monthly one-hour Twitter chat on the hottest topics in Medical Education co-hosted by the JASME and TASME committees.

What: A themed chat on a current area of Medical Education. Previous discussions have included chats about Widening Participation, Inter-Professional Education, Careers in Medical Education, Disability in Medical Education plus loads more. For more information head to the ASME web page

One of our recent chats; ‘Is it time to re-assess assessment in Medical Education?’ drew in a whole range of Twitter-users from students, trainees, lecturers and researchers. Discussions ranged from widening access in selection, to competency-based assessment and postgraduate progression. Have a look at the word cloud to get an idea about the areas discussed at this #MedEdForum on assessment.

When: On the first Monday of each month, 19:30-20:30 BST.

Where: On Twitter. You can follow the hashtag #MedEdForum to observe the discussion, and set yourself up a Twitter account to be able to participate. Make sure you follow JASME @jasme_uk and TASME @tasme_uk accounts to get updates and reminders.

Who: Anyone can participate as long as you have a Twitter account. We welcome participation from all persons regardless of background/training/membership. As long as you have an interest in Medical Education and you play nicely then you are welcome!

Why: A fun, informal way to discuss all things Medical Education and get involved in an international conversation with likeminded individuals from all walks of life.

Upcoming #MedEdForums:

Monday 5th July 2021 19:30
Not another mandatory resilience session: Medical Education’s role in sustainable wellbeing.

Monday 2nd August 2021 19:30
Mask on or mask off: Professional identity and imposter syndrome in Medical Education

TASME 2021 Spring Conference: 10 Years of TASME

On 15th May, the TASME community came together to celebrate TASME’s 10th Birthday, at the TASME 2021 Spring Conference, and what a celebration it was!

TASME’s first virtual conference was attended by almost 300 delegates and was a packed day, rich with discussions and ideas across a wide range of education topics; from educating Out of Hours, to Experienced Based Learning, Inclusivity in the Curriculum and how to make the most of Social Media in Medical education.

We heard from a panel of educators about their diverse journeys and destinations in medical education and their personal Top Tips. We were treated to three inspiring and thought-provoking keynote speakers; Dr Emma Vaux who enthused the audience to consider that they are Never too Busy to Learn, and gave practical tips to creating a working environment geared for learning.

Professor Louise Dubras, who navigated the choppy waters of journeys in education, giving both fantastic education and nautical advice, but in both senses encouraged us to enjoy the journey we are on.

Finally, we heard from Dr Eric Holmboe who discussed the methods and benefits of working with medical students and patients to develop an integrated professional relationship to co-produce desired outcomes to improve education. READ MORE

TASME 2021 Conference Prize Winners

TASME 2021 conference was a massive success, and one worth of celebrating our 10-year birthday. We would like to thank everyone involved in the day and those who attended! We had some fantastic works submitted and we are highlighting here our prize winners!

Oral Presentation Winner – Cailbhe Doherty
Congratulations to Cailbhe for his fantastic presentation on “The LEARN Study: a prospective analysis of learner audience retention with multimedia instructional video lectures”. Not only was it a very topical talk for the increasing virtual presence of medical education, but also an extremely slick and well-designed talk.

Oral Presentation Runner Up – Anna Harvey
A huge well done to Anna who presented “What does success mean to medical students who identify as widening participation? An informal stakeholder scoping study and narrative review”. An excellently presented talk on a topic close to many of our hearts. We are very excited to hear more from Anna at the ASME ASM 2021!

Poster Prize Winner – Lewis Warnock and William Ballard
Congratulations to Lewis and William on their excellent poster on “The Rainbow Elephant in the Room: Is Medical Education Doing Enough?”. Our poster hall this year was filled with fantastic posters which made this decision excruciatingly difficult. However the well thought out narrative alongside great poster design made the work by our winners this year truly stand out from the crowd.

Highly Commended Posters
The quality of submitted work this year were excellent, and we want to highlight some more work we found to be exceptional and are highly commended.
• Katherine Aiken, Anna Sturgeon, Hannah Gillespie “Pass the Bleep: Experience Based Learning to Develop Capable Junior Doctors”
• A Gwyther, E Worley, M Ainsworth, C Roberts, S Woodd “COVID-19 and the ageing workshop: Using aged-suits to enhance students’ communication skills whilst wearing PPE”
• Nicolle Arroyave, Kathryn Ferguson, Katie Reid, Madeline King, Jade Scott-Balgrove, Rachel Fardon “Disparities in medical application preparation and skills on admission to medical school”

Thank you all for joining us this year, and we look forward to engaging with you all more in the coming year!

Team TASME 2021

Review of ‘Miro’, a collaborative online white-board used in a workshop at the Ten Years of TASME: TASME’s Travel Through Time Conference

As part of the TASME Conference ‘Ten Years of TASME: TASME’s Travel Through Time’ in association with MedAll on Saturday 15th May, a few of the TASME committee members decided to run a workshop entitled ‘Clinical Teaching Problems: Pop Up Peer Solutions’.

The TASME committee identified some clear challenges when we, as trainees, design, deliver and evaluate clinical teaching so we wanted to create a buzzing hive-mind whereby other trainees could gather to discuss their own challenges and help one another to come up with peer-peer solutions. READ MORE

The TASME Mentorship Award 2021: Transgender and Non-binary Clinician Mentorship

Barely a day seems to go by without a disparaging newspaper article or Twitter attack. Gender affirming healthcare has been stretched to the limit, with T/NB people facing down either multiple-year waits for first appointments, or bills of thousands of pounds to go private. Even working within the NHS, transgender staff report high levels of bullying and discrimination (Stonewall Trans Report, 2008). READ MORE

HLA-Medics.Academy Summit 2021: International Innovation and Medical Education - Learning Across the Globe

TASME was proud to support The HLA-Medics.Academy Summit 2021 on the 29-30th May 2021. The summit sought to deliver the very best of medical education innovation to a local and global audience.

The conference started with lessons from yester years from Professor Dame Praveen Kumar from ‘Kumar and Clarke's Clinical Medicine’ on the changing role of the doctor.

Kumar described the paradigm shift that has seen clinicians pursue a more varied portfolio career, instead of the traditional tunnel vision clinical route. She explained how burnout and the increasing preference for more flexibility is causing clinicians to pursue a variety of career options. READ MORE

Upcoming ASME Award Deadlines

2021/2 Events & Prizes: Dates for your diary

Event: Focus group to identify how the NIHR Incubator for Clinical Education might help early career researchers develop their academic careers in this area  

Date:15th July 2021, Time: 18:00–19:15, Location: Virtual Focus Group, Registration deadline:12th July 2021   

The NIHR Incubator for Clinical Education Research is the latest in a number of NIHR research capacity building initiatives. It was created in April 2020 with goals to build capacity, develop careers and so realise the impact of Clinical Education Research. The Incubator and its community of practice welcomes all researchers across health and social care professions. 

This event is the second in a series of researcher-facing activities and aims to examine the perspectives of researchers in nursing, midwifery, physician associate and anaesthetic associate fields. We want to know what you would like to see the Incubator getting involved with, what its priorities should be, potential support the Incubator could offer, and any future events/webinars you would like the Incubator to hold. 

Who should attend?  Researchers who wish to develop a career in ClinEdR, or who are currently involved in the field up to two years post-doctorate level within any of the following fields: 

• Nursing and Midwifery 
• Physician associates 
• Anaesthetic associates
   
  How to Register:  Please register via this link: https://forms.gle/v1kDbxWc4WrXW5in7

ASME Committees, Career Groups & Special Interest Groups

Check out our website for details of our Committees, Career Groups & Special Interest Groups.
 
If you wish to update your interest groups on our database please log in to your membership account via our website.

UPDATE: ASME Office

The ASME office team are all working from their homes. This set up will continue as long as is necessary, following government guidance. During this time, we aim to carry out our work to the best of our abilities but please be aware we will not always have instant access to everything we need and at times there may be delays in our ability to complete work or answer queries as quickly as we would like to. Please bear with us during this time. Thank you.