PG40 Building simulation into a foundation teaching programme to enhance learning and develop the clinical teacher

Abstract

Background The delivery of teaching to foundation doctors (FDs) is most often by didactic lectures, delivered by consultants as subject matter experts. This is effective for information delivery but can struggle to engage FDs and does not always allow for interaction and detailed discussion. We aimed to challenge this model by using peer-to-peer teaching and feedback as a primary method of content delivery. Summary of Work Simulation based education for FDs takes place once a month. We engaged our year 2 FDs to design simulation scenarios based on real or synthesised cases. For this they had to set learning objectives, design an appropriate scenario, ensure any equipment needed was available and finally deliver the scenario. They would then put together a presentation on the main learning outcome and deliver this after the debrief. FDs were asked to develop their scenarios and email them to a facilitator prior to the teaching. They were then given feedback on these scenarios and adapted them accordingly. The 17/18 programme was evaluated by collecting a pre and post questionnaire from the FDs. Summary of results 12 simulation sessions were delivered over the year. 12 FDs completed the pre-programme questionnaire and 11 completed the post. When asked ‘How useful is simulation in developing you as an educator’ the FDs scored an average of 6.0 (range 2–9) on the pre and 8.2/10 (range 6–10) on the post-questionnaire. FDs answered ‘How useful has Sim been in developing understanding of learning styles and the educational needs of others´ with an average of 5.3 prior to the programme and 8.4/10 after. Aside from these obvious improvements, some FDs developed novel teaching session e.g. Running a public health, tabletop simulation of a pandemic, that showed even more creativity in teaching. Discussion and Conclusions We have demonstrated that it is possible to run an effective simulation-based teaching programme that allows peer-to-peer teaching and debriefing. We have shown that allowing these scenarios to be designed and delivered by FDs can improve engagement in teaching and assist in developing them as future educators.