This aim of this section is to simply provide you with a variety of tools to help you stop and reflect on your teaching skills and identify areas you might want to develop.   It will help you with your appraisal. It will help re-ignite your enthusiasm for teaching and training (if it has become a bit hum drum) It may even help you with your own personal life or life in general.     If there is anything else which you have found useful in your journey to becoming a trainer that you think others would find helpful, please email me here.   I hope you find this page helpful. (Dr. Ramesh Mehay)

Why Should I Continue Being a Trainer?

You'd be right to ask why we do it especially as it is not very well paid.  We asked some of our trainers this in a recent workshop and hese were some of the reasons they gave:

• * approval as a training practice is one indication of high standards of record keeping, organisation, premises and patient care
• * becoming a training practice is an opportunity to re-examine practice infrastructure and organisation
• *contact with young doctors is stimulating and keeps everyone more in touch with developments in general practice
• *educational activity is a good balance to clinical activity, for both the trainer and the practice
• * develop your educational skills and helps keeps you and the practice up to date clinically
• * being a training practice is very valuable for GP recruitment, either directly if an ex-GPR comes to work at the practice, or indirectly because the practice is known via the VTS, or even because potential recruits from outside the area are attracted by a practice’s training status
• * you get a free pair of hands (sometimes questionable) and some training money in return
• * the pleasure of seeing young people develop and their overt appreciation for your help is immeasurable
• * you develop links with other trainers and thus gain peer support and a cross fertilistion of ideas from group activities like the trainers' workshops and time out
• * some trainers decided to engage in training because they wanted to either give back something they got (whilst some older ones engaged because they wanted to provide better training than they got).

 

Can you identify with any of these?

 

 

Key Things To Remember When Trying To Teach

Good & McCaslin (1992) wrote some key principles worth sharing with you. This is what you should be aiming to achieve when delivering a teaching session:

 

• instructional goals emphasize developing students’ expertise within an application context, understaning of knowledge, and self regulated application of skills

• the content is organised around a few powerful ideas (basic understandings and principles); trying not to be too exhaustive

• the teacher’s role is not just to present information but also to scaffold and respond to students’ learning efforts

• the students’ role is not just to absorb or copy new information but also to actively make sense and construct meaning; getting them involved

• activities and assignments feature tasks that call for problem solving or critical thinking, not just memory or reproduction;

• higher order thinking skills are ….. developed in the process of teaching subject matter knowledge with application contexts that call for students to relate knowledge to their lives outside the classroom by thinking critically or creatively about it or by using knowledge to solve problems or make decisions

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

What Does Yorkshire-Humber Deanery Expect From Me As A Trainer?

 

As a condition of reapproval, the Yorkshire-Humber Deanery expects the following as an integral part of educational work

For Trainer reapproval:

• attendance at trainers’ workshops - these are scheme held workshops which are intended as part of the trainers’ professional development as educators, as well as to communicate national and regional policies

• involvement in the local Half Day Release course

• attendance at one of the Yorkshire Trainers’ Seminars every two years - usually excellent centralised (=Deanery) events, with the chance to network and exchange ideas with trainers in other schemes

 

For Practice reapproval:

l• involvement of non-training partners in teaching and supervision of GPRs

• involvement of other team members in teaching and supervision of GPRs

 

 

And Please Consider Being a HDR Facilitator

Half Day Relase (HDR) happens every Tuesday (2pm-5pm). Past trainers and intending trainers have found it immensely helpful in terms of developing practical teaching skills. You won't be alone: a course organiser will be there to support you. The HDR group is usually split into three groups, each being facilitated by one of the programme directors and co-facilitated by an intending trainer/established trainer. If you are an established trainer, it is certainly one way of reigniting that dynamism and enthusiasm for training.

 

It would be good if you can sign up for 6 months, but don't worry if you can't; shorter periods are okay too. Even occaisional (non regular) sessions are fine. We understand your other committments.

 

 

Benefits: - something different and enjoyable to do on a Tuesday afternoon (a change is as good as a rest – maybe you need something like this to stave off burnout, disillusion and grumpiness) - development of educational skills including small group facilitation - experience of different educational methods which may be useful in the practice and other contexts - getting to know the trainees, giving you an idea of the spectrum of abilities and attitudes against which to assess your own trainee familiarisation with the current training system and the components of MRCGP - feeling part of the VTS and having the satisfaction of making a valued contribution - networking with other trainers/intending trainers (making friends, sharing more ideas together etc.) - AND - the warm glow of being hugely appreciated by the PDs   Contact Maggie Eisner for more information by clicking here