The clinical teacher
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Handover is a key activity in acute health care, with patient safety implications if it is not performed well. This is becoming more important with shorter working hours and therefore a greater number of handovers. Despite this there is a paucity of evidence to guide education to enhance practice. A teaching session for senior medical students on handover of care was devised, delivered and evaluated, with the aim of producing a theoretically sound intervention that is acceptable to students and can be delivered with limited resources. ⋯ A pedagogically sound teaching session, based on best-evidence theories for modelling handover practice, is presented. The perceived ability to handover has also been extremely high after the intervention. Other educators can use this intervention as a starting point for designing interventions within their own setting, and to allow future research to investigate the effectiveness of such interventions.
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Usability is the ease with which something can be used, but this essential concept appears to be rarely considered when using technology for teaching and learning in medical education. ⋯ Careful attention needs to be made to the main factors that determine usability: the learner and context; the technology being used; and the content.
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International Medical Graduates (IMGs) are more likely to be involved in complaints and have lower pass rates for professional examinations. Language barriers and differences in culture and consulting style are suggested to be the cause. A programme was developed in Dumfries and Galloway to address these issues, aiming to provide language and consultation skills training, and create a culture where these issues could be discussed openly. ⋯ The programme was valued by all those involved, and showed that short-term interventions can improve language and consultation skills, potentially helping to address the challenges faced by this particular group of doctors.
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The importance of the post-take ward round to both patient safety and medical education cannot be overemphasised. Despite this, significant variation exists between consultants and senior doctors in the conduct and content of ward rounds. This discrepancy prompted the idea of using a checklist to audit whether essential components were being consistently addressed during post-take ward rounds. This would allow an exploration of whether introducing a checklist would benefit both patient safety and medical education. ⋯ As such variability was demonstrated between consultants in their conduct of the ward rounds, it was concluded that the introduction of this checklist would provide a standardised approach that junior doctors could learn from. Therefore, the introduction of this checklist into clinical practice was identified as a worthwhile teaching resource for juniors in order to enhance patient safety and foundation doctor learning.