1. Managing Doctors in Difficulty

*** Please note that this workshop is now fully booked ***

This workshop will use the NACT UK document "Managing Trainees in Difficulty" to help participants gain confidence in managing and supporting trainees with difficulties. Small group work will be used to explore scenario examples of doctors in difficulty, followed by plenary discussion of learning points. Participants will have the opportunity to explore current arrangements and utility of the new guidance.

The framework outlined in the NACT UK document hopes to enable prompt management of trainees in difficulty. Standard paperwork enables concerns and an action plan to be documented. Managing issues early and appropriately improves training satisfaction and service delivery, while maintaining patient safety.

Facilitators: Liz Spencer, Gloucestershire NHS Foundation Trust and Simon Atkinson, University of Bristol, UK

2. Assessing and Tracking Professionalism

*** Please note that this workshop is now fully booked ***

At the end of this workshop, participants will be aware of:

• The historical background relevant to our understanding and interest in professionalismin healthcare.
• The current context and drivers for assessing and tracking professionalism
• The purposes of assessing professionalism i.e. the inferences and decisions we want to draw from the results: some literature to support these.
• Key components of professionalism and criteria for judgements.
• The nature of assessment of professionalism and how to improve the construct validityof the decisions.
• How to address students' concerns and potential risks in assessing and trackingprofessionalism.
• The balance between supporting the student and protecting the patient.
• IT systems and processes to track assessments and some of the difficulties experiencedby schools that have instituted such procedures.
• How the university Boards of Examiners might deal with accumulated concerns

Presentations will be given on the background and context, including definitions of professionalism. Presentation will be available through ASME after the workshop andList of References will be provided. Scenario-triggered small group discussions will be used to tackle key issues such as; the advantages and potential risks in assessing professionalism; taking into account the students' perspective; the tension between supporting students and protecting patients; who decides: Board of Examiners or Fitness to Practise Committees; national v local decision-making processes and committee. There will be a demonstration of Edinburgh's IT system for collecting and accessing data and presentation of our 18 months' experience of collecting such information and how we have worked around some of the difficulties, expected and unexpected.

Facilitators: Helen Cameron, Director Medical Teaching Organisation, Karen Simpson, Theme Head, Personal Professional Development in undergraduate medicine, University of Edinburgh, UK

3. Understanding of ADVANCED consulting skills in primary care model (expertise model)

*** Please note that this workshop has been cancelled ***

This interactive workshop will demonstrate how the expertise model could be used asa developmental tool. It will also explore its application for appraisal, revalidation and self development.A demonstration of the model will be given, with participant assessment encouraged. Video taped consultations will be viewed and assessed. Powerpoint slides will be used to explain the background to the model and ppt handouts provided to all participants.

Facilitator: Les Ashton, Leicester, UK

4. External Examiners Group

*** Please note that this workshop is now fully booked ***

This workshop will discuss Assessment and Teaching through current and past experience of external examining at medical schools in order to try to prepare new external examiners.The workshop hopes to develop and improve knowledge of forms of assessments at theundergraduate level in Medical Schools and to collate ideas on testing of attitudes, knowledge and skills of undergraduate medical students. Expand upon skills that exists in assessment in Medical Schools currently. The educational methods/interactive learning methods that will be used include: sharing experience: the good, the bad, the ugly; ideas for sharing best practice; creation of forum for frequently asked questions. PPT slides and handouts from the workshop will be provided to participants.

Facilitator: Vinod Patel, Institute of Clinical Education, Warwick Medical School, Coventry, UK

5. Chickening Out? Student Choice of Challenge in Skills Classes

*** Please note that this workshop is now fully booked ***

Participants attending this workshop will acquire knowledge of: A teaching process for giving control over challenge to the learner; The learning theories informing this innovation; Student experiences of this; Solutions to problems which can arise when implementing this in a group setting; Potential applications of the teaching approach.

Participants will also develop attitudes of: Autonomy-supportive teaching and the applicability of learning theories.

Participants should develop skills of: Tutor scaffolding of learning (this will be learned by observation); Giving feedback (this will be learned by giving/receiving feedback).

Activities include: Theories about adult autonomy in learning, the construction of learning and social cognitive learning will be discussed in groups to predict the effect of giving choice in a group setting. A model teaching session will be demonstrated where choiceis given to the interviewer of a simulated patient in a group setting. The choice here will be the strength of emotion "felt" by the patient about their chronic illness. Two simulated patients will be interviewed by two group members one volunteering for the mild levelof emotion and the other volunteering for the strong level. Feedback will follow each interview, and the perceived effects of choice will be discussed.

Findings from the implementation of this teaching session will be outlined and discussed by comparison with the participants' predicted effects and the effects found in the modelteaching session. Participants' own experiences of giving choice to students will be included in this discussion. This will be followed by a group discussion of: what would help this to be most useful to interviewers and to observers; are there other applications?

Facilitators: Janet Lefroy, Senior Lecturer in Community Medical Education and is a GP, Bob McKinley,Team Leader for Academic General Practice, Keele University School of Medicine, UK

6. Consultation Skills Training and Assessment: Using Role Play and Simulation

*** Please note that this workshop is now fully booked ***

Using role play and simulation has become a key part of teaching medical students, specialist training registrars, and is used by some doctors as part of their Continuing Professional Development. The terms  simulation, role play and standardised patient have become contaminated by individual interpretation.

Through this workshop a referenced view point of a role play and a simulation will be presented. Role players, in delivery of a standardised performance, allow for consistency of delivery, and hence are useful for assessment and for some aspects of training. Simulators, on the other hand, in that they are simulating a real patient that they have met or know through a second party, become the patient. They react to the consulter in the way that the real person would have reacted. Simulators, while not providing a rigid consistency of role, do provide a consistency in "person". In doing this they give an authenticity missing in role-play. Simulation facilitates the exploration of extra information and patient behaviour relating to the reality of the doctor patient relationship, which in real life is affected by many factors, including the nature and appearance of the medical student or doctor in the consultation.

In this workshop we will present a scenario in role play form and in simulation form, exploring the extra dimensions, information and behaviours provided by simulation. We will then look at how simulation can be used in both the undergraduate and postgraduate medical curriculum. By end of workshop those attending will have: observed and considered the difference between simulation and role play, and its implications;  considered the use of simulation and role play in medical teaching, learning and assessment; explored the issue of power dynamics in the consultation, in simulation and in role play; looked at the place of simulation particularly in the medical curriculum; looked at how to deliver simulation in the undergraduate and postgraduate medical teaching arenas

Facilitators: Rhona Knight, GP, Leicester and Michele Gutteridge, Simulated Patient Trainer, University of Warwick, UK

7. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction in Medical Education

*** Please note that this workshop is now fully booked ***

By the end of the workshop, participants should have developed: knowledge: appreciation of the stress associated with studying medicine; awareness of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness based approaches to dealing with stress; understanding of the ways in which MBSR can benefit general health, educational performance and professional capabilities; awareness of the increasing evidence base behind Mindfulness based approaches for stress reduction.

Skills: be able to perform the 3-Minute Breathing Space technique to easily and instantly reduce personal stress; use Mindful approaches to Kindliness and Non-judgement to benefit self and others.

Attitudes: to accept that medical educators have a role in helping student understand the stresses involved in studying medicine, and introducing students to a variety of coping techniques; encourage an open minded approach to Mindfulness.

Pre-workshop reading - a small amount of literature will be circulated to workshop participants prior to attendance to provide enough background knowledge to facilitate the session.

The workshop will start with a short introductory presentation to set the context of the workshop followed by a breakout exercise on ideas and perceptions of common sources of stress encountered during basic medical education, sharing good practice on participant's experiences. There will be an interactive discussion on how to cultivate good stress-management habits in medical students and therefore doctors and an introduction to Mindfulness and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. Practical exercise: Mindfulness exercises will be demonstrated.

Facilitators: Kate Thomas, Associate Professor and Senior Tutor for Welfare, Jayne Sayers, MBChB Student Learning and Welfare Advisor, Lisa Jones, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychiatry and Duncan Shrewsbury, 4th year Medical Student, Medical School, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK

8. Using a Health Services Research Model to Help Medical Education Research Programme Planning

*** Please note that this workshop is now fully booked ***

Improving the quality of medical education research requires planned programmes of work which aim to identify generalisabilities and progress knowledge. To do this, we can learn from other areas of research, such as health services research (HSR). Many similarities can be drawn between educational research and HSR e.g., in both, there are problems relating to the difficulty of standardising the design and delivery of the interventions, they are both sensitive to features of the local context. While health services research was seen as the poor relation to "hard" medical science, it has now come of age, due in quite some part to the  approaches used. One such approach, which seems particularly pertinent to medical education research, is the MRC framework for complex interventions (http://www.mrc.ac.uk/complexinterventionsguidance).

The goals of this workshop are to:

• introduce and discuss the application of the MRC framework for complex interventions to education research
• help participants use the MRC framework to structure their own research plans (which they are requested to bring to the workshop)

Facilitators: Jen Cleland, Lead for Medical Education Research and Clinical Communication, University of Aberdeen, Tim Dornan, Honorary Professor, University of Manchester, Val Wass, Head of School, Keele Medical School, Charlotte Ringsted, Professor of Medical Education, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

9. JASME Workshop: Setting up a project in medical education: an introduction to research perspectives

*** Please note that this workshop is now fully booked ***

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Demonstrate the principles and processes in developing a project or research study
• Demonstrate a broad understanding of methodological approaches
• Consider how to seek research ethics approval
• Work through the process using their own study idea or a set proposal

This workshop will also provide an introduction and overview to:

• Positivism
• Post-positivism
• Social theory
• Constructivism and
• Participatory action research
• How the perspectives compare
• How they guide the researcher
• How they inform the research methods

Facilitators: Professor Patsy Stark, Leeds and Dr Jan Illing, Durham, UK