Working With New Associate Clinical Educators At Chester University

Associate Clinical Educators Vikki, Bob, Howard and Gregg at Chester University
Associate Clinical Educators Vikki, Bob, Howard and Gregg at Chester University

Working on the Physician Associate Programmes as an Associate Clinical Educator is always a pleasure. It’s an even better experience when you give a new ACE an opportunity to spread their wings and fly solo for a day. They are the lifeblood of the organisation, after all.

This week we gave one of our new ACEs the opportunity to work with us at the University of Chester on the PA programme. We also gave a potential ACE the opportunity to shadow another experienced ACE before being let loose on the students.

We were tasked with assisting in the teaching of Musculoskeletal Examinations: Hands, Feet, Shoulders, Knee and Hip, with the help of clinical Lecturers Jack and Alice, who had prepared the students with an earlier lecture.

I particularly enjoy the MSK sessions and as I have some significant pathologies myself. This gave the students the opportunity to work with someone with real musculoskeletal problems, and also able to give feedback to the students on their examination technique.

Teaching in the skills suite next door was Greg Hobbs, a trusted and highly experienced Associate Clinical Educators. He was being shadowed by Vikki one of our newly trained ACEs.

I was in the main skills suite with Howard, one of our new ACEs, who was now being given an opportunity to show me and the clinicians what he could do. He never let me down and his understanding of motivational interviewing techniques also allowed him to help the PA students sharpen their communication skills.

All of our Associate Clinical Educators are highly experienced communicators before they embark upon our ACE training programme. This is one of the main criteria for the role.

Clinical skills are important, but so are communication skills, and we pride ourselves on being able to give structured feedback to students about both elements of their interaction with an “expert patient”.

We always give the groups a small demonstration of the examination being taught, then we let the students get hands on with the ACEs as soon as possible, making sure everyone engages with the lesson for the day.

Happy group of Physician Associates at Chester University
Working with this happy group of Physician Associates at Chester University is always rewarding

Keeping the students engaged is another skill we are very good at. All of our ACEs have performance based training backgrounds and are trained actors, and know how to keep an audience focussed on the performance. This is an important but often missed aspect of clinical teaching and is not something that is taught to clinical educators normally.

We believe that it is important for the students to have a light hearted approach to the training. Learning should be enjoyable and not be a chore.

Next week is revision week at Chester University, so three of our experienced ACEs are up there again to help the students prepare for their Mock OSCEs, another aspect of the important role we play.

If you have enjoyed this post and want to learn more about how we can add hi-fidelity simulation with structured feedback to your students and institution, why not come online on the 4th September 2021 at 12 noon and listen to 6 clinical leads talk about their experience of working with ACEs and Meducate Academy. It’s free and you even receive a free hardback, soft touch notebook in the post!

Sign up here to join The ACE Online Conference 2021

Agenda For Meducate Academy Online ACE Conference 2021

Meducate Academy First Annual Online Conference on Simulation

 

September 4th between 12-2pm on Zoom

 

Are you involved in Medical Education?

Do you use simulation as part of your teaching?

Do you use Role Players and simulated patients during your Clinical Skills teaching sessions?

Would you like to know more about the benefits of simulation?

If you have answered yes to any of the above, why not find out more about the work of the Associate Clinical Educator (ACE).

Hi Fidelity simulation with focussed feedback from an expert patient can play an important role in improving the learning outcomes of your clinical sessions, and utilising the skills of an ACE can help you improve the performance and standard of your clinical teaching modules.

Meducate Academy are therefore pleased to announce the launch of their Free First Annual Online Conference on Simulation on Sept 4th between 12-2pm on Zoom.

You will have the chance to listen to 6 Highly experienced clinicians talk about their experience of simulation in teaching practice and how the ACE has helped their students develop important skills whilst also developing their ability to communicate more effectively with a patient.

There will be a Q & A session in the last hour, giving you the opportunity to address the speakers directly.

ACE National Conference Day

The big day is almost upon us!

Our Guest Speakers & Agenda

 

Meducate Academy’s ACE National Conference is for anyone interested in simulation and its use specifically in teaching medical professionals.

We have some great speakers lined up.

Speakers with expertise in teaching medicine using Role-players and Associate Clinical Educators, all of whom have had a personal experience of working with ACEs in a clinical teaching environment.

The agenda for the conference is as follows:

12 noon: Opening Introduction from Mark Reynolds, your host for the event.

Each speaker will talk for approximately 10-15 minutes about their chosen subject outlined briefly below.

 

 

Professor Jim Parle - Keynote Speaker

Professor Jim Parle will talk about his role in creating the Associate Clinical Educator. People based simulation has been a key theme of his academic career and he utilised ACEs widely to both teach and examine PA students during his tenure at the University of Birmingham.

This will be a short history lesson from a highly experienced clinician and clinical educator who is a former chair of the UK and Ireland Universities for PA education.

Jim believes strongly that if we are to make best and most moral ‘use’ of patients in clinical education, we have to do as much as we possibly can in simulation and that real people are the best hi fidelity simulators.

 

James Ennis

James is currently Clinical Director at the University of Chester and will discuss his work on the use of ACEs alongside other methods of simulation. His work is based on his experience of working with ACEs at various Universities around the country on the Physician Associate Programme that he has been heavily involved in.

Uzo Ehiogu

Currently, Uzo is a consultant in Rehabilitation and Physical preparation. He is also a Clinical Teaching Fellow at the Royal Orthopedic Hospital in Birmingham. He will talk about the work he has been doing with ACEs from a Musculo-skeletal perspective with 4th Year Medical Students and how that has informed his teaching style.

Kate Straughton

Kate is a Senior Lecturer with The Physician Associate Programme at The University of Birmingham. She is also currently the President of the Faculty of Physician Associates and will talk about how working with ACEs has assisted her in the education of Physician Associates.

Peter Gorman

Pete is a Clinical Lead at the University of Wolverhampton on the Physician Associate Programme and will talk about his experiences working online with ACEs during the Pandemic, and how this has affected the students he has taught during this difficult period.

Sarah Baig

Sarah is a Pharmacist and is currently Programme Director for Independent Prescribing at the University of Birmingham. Sarah has worked in several sectors during her career, including hospital and community pharmacy, but more recently has headed up a team of pharmacists in the Local Primary Care Network. She only recently started working with ACEs and is going to talk about her personal experiences in this area.

Bob Spour

Bob Spour

Founder

Matt Chapman

Matt Chapman

Managing Director