Meducate Academy Educating The Next Generation Of PAs

Meducate Academy has had a busy two weeks working alongside the University of Chester, University of Wolverhampton and Matrix Education on several exciting projects.

As always, Matrix Education delivered an excellent two day course, this time in a beautiful hotel deep in the heart of London’s West End. We were there in our capacity as Role Players and Associate Clinical Educators providing our role play and lay clinical education services to the PA students about to take their National Exams. Students from Bournemouth, Reading, Sheffield, Birmingham and other parts of the UK were in attendance.

We encouraged the students to stay engaged with both history taking in the morning session and physical examinations in the afternoon. We also coached them in techniques that would allow them to get through the exams with confidence and advice on how to lower their stress levels prior to the OSCE.

Once the weekend was over we were booked to work with 2nd year PAs at the Riverside Campus at the University of Chester. They tasked us with delivering a whole range of skills. We went through all the systems exams from Musculo-skeletal, through Cardiovascular examinations and some challenging scenarios thrown in. One of our team also ran a breast examination station, giving the students an opportunity to practice important but often neglected skills, including feedback on their technique from the associate clinical educator.

After two days of teaching in Chester we were back on the road the next day day to Wolverhampton University, working on an OSCE with my old colleague and the developer of the ACE role, Professor Jim Parle and the PA Course Clinical Lead Pete Gorman.  Despite the obvious restrictions placed on us due to Covid-19, we were still able to perform at a high level.

Meducate were represented by two roleplayers on the day and the feedback was excellent.

This week has seen us travelling back up to Chester for a mock OSCE with 1st year PAs. We were tasked with providing two ACEs and also with the filming of one of the history stations. This presented us with its own challenges. We are fortunate in having some new cameras, lights and sound equipment, which proved their worth on the day. The quality of the video was excellent and Chester are thinking of using this set up as a regular feature of their training programme. It is a great way for students to check on their own progress and has the added bonus of being available for them to access during their revision.

It is great to get back to working with students once more, and for many the Covid-19 crisis has been problematic.

At Meducate Academy we used this time to create opportunities and we are glad to say that we have been having our most successful year yet.

I also spent some time chatting to one of our most senior ACEs and role players Mark Reynolds, and he offered to pen a few words about how much he enjoys his role working with Meducate Academy.

Mark has been involved in Medical Role Play and ACE work for over twelve years and he is also a great facilitator.

“I have been pleased to be part of the Meducate team since day one and hope that my input in those early days helped the company to shape the way forward.

Meducate is really up and running now and we are currently enjoying working for the Universities of Chester and Wolverhampton on their Physician Associate Programmes, as well as working on pre-national PA OSCE courses for Matrix Education.

The role of the Associate Clinical Educator is something I have been identified with since 2008. My background in performance helped me to become an effective educator and I enjoy so much teaching clinical communication skills and body system examinations. I believe that it is very important in life to seek a role that makes a difference. I can see when my colleagues and I are working with PA students that we are making a difference to their learning; helping them to improve their communication and examination skills and most importantly, helping them to reach that point where they pass their formative and summative OSCEs.

I’m proud to be an ACE, indeed I’m one of the longest serving ones in the UK, and it’s a lot of fun working with these students and my colleagues too. When you’re having fun and being paid, life doesn’t get any better than that.”

Mark Reynolds

RECRUITMENT OPPORTUNITIES

If you are an Actor / Roleplayer who wishes to train as an Associate Clinical educator please get in touch with Matthew Chapman at Meducate Academy. We will be offering Free Training Courses in the coming months, to help you realise this ambition.