… at the …
Number 98
Monthly news
1st January 2012
Diana Thomas, Senior Professional Education
Practitioner / Modern Matron writes:-
power, social policy, professions and professional
roles and team/group working.
Pre-registration Nurse Education
The quality and purpose of pre-registration nurse
placements has long been debated by the public,
the nursing profession itself and our professional
bodies (Royal College of Nursing [equivalent to the
BMA] and the Nursing and Midwifery Council
[equivalent to the GMC]) with regards to the
clinical element of nurse training. The changes in
the curriculum have reflected the opinions of
stakeholders, service users, carers, service
providers and academic institutions, and the
placement pathways under the new curriculum
have been designed to map the patient journey in
terms of available and emerging learning
opportunities which placements can provide.
There have been recent changes made to the
curriculum of all fields of Nursing and Midwifery. This
has been as a result of Nursing & Midwifery Council
guidelines published last year (Standards for PreRegistration Nurse Education).
One of the challenges of developing a new curriculum
is to ensure that all modules are flexible to reflect the
changes to health care, policy, provision and delivery
of services. The new curriculum has a clear sequence
of topics and sharp and demonstrable increases in the
levels of intellectual input throughout the programme.
The curriculum has developed uni-professional and
shared modules, which allow students to revisit,
extend and further their knowledge, understanding
and skills with other practitioners of health care
including medical students. These modules are
structured to facilitate an equal balance of theory and
practice; ensuring evidence based knowledge and
understanding, critical reflection, the development of
critical analysis and critical thinking skills and have a
strong emphasis on the supervision of learning and
assessment.
There is also a strong focus on Inter-professional
modules. The revised syllabus for these modules is
reflected in a new title “The Purpose, Scope and
Context of Inter-professional Collaboration”. Students
are expected to both contextualise and analyse the
various drivers for and against effective interprofessional working. The central Inter-professional
Conference is paramount to this module, but there is
also on-going development of the “2nd Life” platform.
This addition is an adjunct to established teaching and
learning approaches and allows students to optimise
on learning opportunities in order to model a wide
range of inter-professional scenarios in “real time”
environments.
The inter-professional module is shared across all
health and social care programmes as well as with
medical students from the University of Bristol. It aims
to investigate service user or carer involvement,
In nursing, as in all other health care preregistration training, we strive to bridge the “theory
to practice gap”. The rapidly changing health care
agenda and the often uncertain health and social
care landscape has meant that learning in practice
expands beyond the historical hospital based
approach to one where community practice is no
longer viewed as “specialist”. Greater emphasis on
these types of placements also strengthens the
nursing philosophy in areas such as patient
dignity, vulnerable individuals and marginalised
groups. Current health policy focuses on improving
health, advocating more choice and a much
greater emphasis and understanding on care
closer to home. The new curriculum reflects this
with regards to the placement pathways that have
been developed.
There is more of an emphasis on a “patient facing”
approach to practice which as we know, occurs
everywhere and not just in a hospital setting and it
has been recognised that in order to understand
the patient journey and overall experience, a more
rounded approach to placements needs to be
offered. The model that is used in this region
supports the development of transferrable skills for
an increasingly diverse patient population that will
prepare individuals to be competent, caring,
creative and critical practitioners who are able to
face the challenges of health care in a diverse
range of settings in the future.
Medical Dean Dr Peter Fletcher pays tribute to Dr
John Prior who died on 20th November 2011.
Do “those who can, do, while those that can’t teach?”
In fact doctors who are best at ‘doing’, understand
what they are doing and can explain it to everyone
else make not just the best doctors but also the best
teachers. All knew of John’s talents in Medicine
generally and Thoracic Medicine specifically – see:
http://www.thisisannouncements.co.uk/12710941?s_s
ource=clsw_tiwg, but not all may be aware of his
exceptional talents as a teacher.
In Latin ‘doctor’ means teacher (and teaching is one of
the 7 qualities of Good Medical Practice) and John
had always taught students, doctors and other health
care professionals. In 2004 when Gloucestershire’s
NHS created a University of Bristol Clinical Academy,
John became one of our first Unit Coordinators and
Tutors. He looked after 12 year 3 students for 9 weeks
at a time as they navigated their way through a unit
comprising thoracic medicine, cardiology, vascular
surgery and other ‘tubes’ related specialty elements.
John excelled at delivering their learning, persuading
others to help him deliver the curriculum and for those
students being very much THEIR tutor. In the weekly
tutorials John and his tutor group ranged over many
aspects of medicine and health care within and
without the curriculum! He was their first port of call
with problems while remaining responsible for getting
them through the unit and throughout acted as a role
model of the doctor they wanted to become.
On graduation day the student body (Galenicals)
award prizes to their teachers including one per
Academy. In 2008 they awarded the Gloucestershire
Teacher of the Year prize to John; it was well
deserved and he was so proud to receive it. We and
his last ever group of students will miss him greatly.
We would like to thank everyone for
their support in 2011 and wish you all a
Happy and Prosperous New Year
DATES FOR YOUR
DIARY
5th Year Students Long Case Examinations
2nd Exam: 16th – 27th January 2012 – GRH/CGH
3rd & Final Exam: 6th March 2012 – Redwood
Education Centre, GRH
If you are interested in taking part in any of the above
exams please email: Emily.L.Mathews@glos.nhs.uk
University of Bristol
D.J.Cahill@bristol.ac.uk (MB ChB Programme Director)
Nigel.Rawlinson@bristol.ac.uk (Director of Student Affairs)
Andrew.Blythe@bristol.ac.uk (Deputy Programme director)
Nicki.Cohen@bristol.ac.uk (Deputy Programme Director)
trevor.thompson@bristol.ac.uk (Vertical Themes Lead)
http://www.bris.ac.uk/medical-education/tlhp/
Teaching and Learning for Health Professionals Certificate course
tlhp-enquire@bristol.ac.uk
TLHP Enquiries Mailbox
Peter.Fletcher@glos.nhs.uk
Medical Dean University of Bristol at Gloucestershire (G x6230)
Hannah.Chant@glos.nhs.uk
Undergraduate Skills Lead (G x5635)
Angie.Coulson@glos.nhs.uk
Undergraduate Medical Education Coordinator (G x6231)
Emily.Shingleton-Smith@glos.nhs.uk
Undergraduate Administrator (G x6233)
Abigail.Samuels@glos.nhs.uk
Jane.Carter1@glos.nhs.uk
Nicola.Hannaway@glos.nhs.uk
Hannah.Bland@glos.nhs.uk
Clinical Teaching Fellows
Unit Coordinators & leads within Gloucestershire
Caroline.Rodd@glos.nhs.uk
Year 3 Junior Medicine and Surgery
Philip.Davies@glos.nhs.uk
Year 3 Musculoskeletal Diseases, Emergency Medicine &
Ophthalmology ‘MDEMO’ & Deputy Dean
Attila.Sipos@glos.nhs.uk
Year 3 Psychiatry (2gether NHSFT)
Royse.Murphy@nhs.net
Year 3 Ethics
Philip.Kaloo@glos.nhs.uk
Year 4 O&G and neonates (‘RHCN’)
Simon.Ackroyd@glos.nhs.uk
Year 4 Paediatrics (‘COMP1’)
Tom.Millard@glos.nhs.uk
Year 4 CoE & Dermatology (‘COMP2’)
Anne.Hampton@glos.nhs.uk
Consultant Senior Lecturer General Practice
Rebecca.Frewin@glos.nhs.uk
Year 4 Pathology
Mahesh.Parmar@glos.nhs.uk
Daniel.Evans@glos.nhs.uk
Year 4 Anaesthesia
Kim.Benstead@glos.nhs.uk
Year 5 Oncology & Unit Coordinator PPP
Cath.Blinman@glos.nhs.uk
Year 5 Palliative Care
Tripti.Mahajan@glos.nhs.uk
Christopher.Custard@glos.nhs.uk
Year 5 Senior Medicine (G & C respectively)
Mark.Vipond@glos.nhs.uk
James.Wheeler@glos.nhs.uk
Year 5 Senior Surgery (G & C respectively)