The fourth LondonHCSTN board meeting of 2019 began with a big announcement. But we’ll save the best for last. First, a summary of the minutes.
The LondonHCSTN board applications are still open. There’s a persuasive list of reasons to join on our website, along with a link to the application form. Applicants will know shortly after the deadline (8th July) whether they’ve been successful. We’re trying to encourage more first year trainees to apply – You can help by simply sharing the link!
Haroon Chughtai represented the LondonHCSTN at the London Healthcare Science Workforce Group meeting last month. A key message was that Health Education England (HEE) are driving efforts to gather accurate workforce data on the number of healthcare scientists in London. On September 6th, we’ll be hosting a workshop at the London Healthcare Science Education Conference. The details are coming soon but in the meantime, applications are open. Spaces go fast.
We’ll be posting healthcare science facts to our social media platforms in the coming month. Our aim is to promote the work that healthcare scientists do to contribute to clinical services across the NHS. Anyone can get involved, so please email us to register your interest.
Third year STPs need no reminding that the OSFAs are coming up. We’re organising a big post-OSFA social for all London trainees. Keep an eye on future newsletters for details.
And the big announcement? Our co-chair Haroon Chughtai has been shortlisted for a HEE HEAT award for his improvements to training both in and out of his trust! Haroon and co-chair Stef Piatek, who recently won the NHS Healthcare Science Rising Star award, are coming to the end of their STP programmes. They’ll be missed and they’ve done an excellent job overseeing the events, socials and communications from the LondonHCSTN this past year.
The new board members will be inducted in August. But rest assured, we’ve been taking notes from our co-chairs all year.
Calling all current 1st and 2nd years – applications for the London HCSTN board 2019/20 are now open!
The London HCSTN is a network lead entirely by trainees. Our mission is to support, represent, inform and connect London’s wonderful Trainee Healthcare Scientists. We are currently recruiting board members for the upcoming year. Find out more about what’s involved from our recruitment flyer below.
If you’d like to get involved and make a difference to the STP community, just complete the application form by following this link.
Not sure it’s for you? Read current co-chair Haroon’s inspiring review about his involvement with the board to help you decide: The Role of Regional Trainee Networks.
The London HCSTN hosted an OSFA workshop on 26th April 2019. I hope all who attended found it as interesting and informative as I did, but for those who couldn’t make it – read on to hear more!
By: Catherine Redshaw
Before we begin – what actually is the OSFA?
The ‘Objective Structured Final Assessment’ (OSFA) is a tool for assessing the practical skills trainees should have mastered prior to registration as a Clinical Scientist. They consist of 12 stations (9 specialist and 3 generic) and are designed to reflect routine practice in the workplace.
The Mock-OSFA workshop
The day focused on the generic section of the OSFAs. There was a great turn-out, with around 65 attendees from many specialisms across London.
First, Dr Frances Boa presented ‘An assessors point of view’ where she delivered an overview of what the OSFA entails along with what assessors are looking for. Next, Clare Anderson provided more helpful tips for the OSFA’s. This was followed by a Q&A session with trainers and assessors where we used sli.do to ask any burning questions, no matter how big or small. Lots of questions were answered and this session was greatly appreciated received a very high rating on the feedback forms!
Sli.do Q&A session
After some further discussions, we worked in groups of three to create our own generic OSFA stations. We were given time to write a question based on the professional practice competencies and then formulate an answer. The assessors circulated giving hints and tips on structure and content.
In the afternoon, we had a go at answering the questions other groups had prepared. One person acted as the trainee, another as assessor and the third as actor (if required). We had 12 minutes to attempt each question to practice answering at a suitable pace (12 minutes either feels really long or short – but I guess that depends how well the station is going!) It would of course be great to have real past OSFA questions with example answer schemes, but these are a tightly kept secret.
Trainees going over the practice OSFA questions
Overall, I found the event really useful. Here are the tips I found most valuable:
Don’t forget the basics of an answer, read through the question properly and think of how you would approach the situation in the workplace.
Ensure to understand the workings behind what we do (such as calculations). When working out an answer, speak aloud so assessors can hear our thought process.
Try to forget previous stations when moving on! Don’t get hung up on the past one if you believe you didn’t perform well.
The assessors can’t give anything away so don’t be put off by their straight faces or if they make notes.
Assessors cannot give extra hints or re-word questions.
There are no ‘killer questions’ – if a correct answer is required to move to the next section of the station, assessors will provide it if necessary.
To pass, we need to be minimally competent – i.e. safe to practice.
The assessors assured us they want to us to pass and OSFAs are not something to be feared – though this will be hard to remember on the morning of!
The day ended with some well-earned drinks in a nearby bar, a great way to celebrate a successful event. Good luck to all the third years with OSFAs coming up soon – and for first and second years, I’ll see you at mock OSFA 2020!
P.S if you attended the day you should have received a copy of the presentations and trainee written questions – if not feel free to email us (londonhcstn@gmail.com). Remember the National School’s website contains loads of information about the OSFAs and you can receive support from us and the National School if needed.
Our trainees represented the LondonHCSTN at NHS England’s (NHSE) London headquarters at Skipton House – during HCS week!
By Catherine Redshaw
The NHSE London Scientific Director and Lead Healthcare Scientists from around the region invited us to run a lunchtime stall at NHS England’s London headquarters at Skipton House during Healthcare Science (HCS) week 2019! Harriet, Stef and I went along to demonstrate the work of the trainee network board and represent clinical science trainees from each of our specialisms
This was an excellent opportunity to promote the work of HCS and was a really enjoyable day. It was interesting to hear how little some of the attendees (up to exec level in NHS England) knew about HCS and the route into our role. Especially considering healthcare scientists make up 5% of the workforce! We definitely made the most of this opportunity to promote HCS and the STP.
To promote cardiac science, I brought along some images of blocked coronary arteries and equipment, including stents, that would be used to treat this. I also had some pacemakers and a defibrillator to show how we would help treat cardiac rhythm problems.
Harriet promoted the work of vascular science by displaying clear ultrasound images of veins and arteries from all around the body. Vascular science helps with the diagnosis and prognosis of all kinds of disease, including strokes!
Stef hosted a fun interactive quiz about clinical genetics keeping a score board so we could congratulate the winner at the end!
Stef, Harriet and I manning the LondonHCSTN stall
Other stalls included healthcare scientists from many specialisms. These consisted of audiology, who were performing hearing tests and genomics who were demonstrating DNA extraction using strawberries. There was even an extract from award winning play ‘Nosocomial’ which used theatre to communicate the essential work of healthcare scientists in the NHS.
Scene from Noscomial
These interactive lunchtime sessions are simple but effective ways of getting the word out about healthcare science! To see more from HCS Week 2019 checkout #HCSWeek2019 on Twitter.
Keep
an eye out for additional courses specifically geared to other
profession(s) which will soon be released for doctors, nurses, other
professions associated to medicine and for administrative staff.
One of our trainees attened the NHSE CSO’s Annual Conference a couple of weeks ago. Read on for a summary of the event and thoughts about the event.
By Haroon Chughtai
On the 7th and 8th of March healthcare scientists from across the nation descended upon London to attend the Chief Scientific Officer’s Annual Conference. This year’s event was entitled “Leading the Future – 2030” and focussed on how healthcare scientists are and can work nationally to drive the future NHS. This was the second year that I’ve had the opportunity to attend, and as last year, it was an inspiring and thought provoking experience.
CS-Who’s Conference?
Before I describe some of the talks and topics that were discussed, a little bit of background. The conference is hosted by NHS England’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dame Professor Sue Hill, who is the lead for the NHS’ healthcare science workforce. In addition to this, you may have heard her name as the lead in establishing the NHS Genomic Medicine Centres and spearheading the NHS contribution to the 100,000 Genomes Project.
The format of the day included plenary sessions, interactive panel discussions and workshops, as well as ample time for networking.
HCS & the LTP
What we’re trying to achieve
A significant focus of the two days was looking ahead to what the role of healthcare scientists will be in the delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan. Rather than go through each talk, here’s a quick summary of three of the themes covered during the two days.
The Digital Agenda
One of the key themes that was present was around how digital transformation is an essential enabling step to deliver the future we wish for our staff and patients. This forms a large part of the underlying infrastructure needed for delivering the Long Term Plan, as well as in enabling the areas highlighted in The Topol Review.
A slide from Matthew Swindells’ talk
Matthew Swindells, NHS England’s National Director for Operations and Information presented some ideas on how the NHS would be using better digital platforms to support care across healthcare. Only by being able to share information easily, effectively and securely between groups that need it can we have a future where we are able to make an informed decision for a specific person’s healthcare no matter if their GP is in Carlisle, they’re admitted to a hospital in London, and have their samples analysed by a lab in Manchester.
The Impact on Primary Care
Such a challenge was highlighted by Dr. Nikki Kanani, a GP in south-east London and Acting Director of Primary Care for NHS England. She spoke of how primary care is changing as people now have increased access to their personal data – in her case, a patient attending a clinic with a couple of their genetic data on a memory stick. Such changes will occur whether or not the NHS drives them, so we must keep up to ensure that we can continue providing the care that people expect. Dame Prof. Sue Hill mentioned how this may require more involvement of healthcare scientists in the community as point-of-care technology and other diagnostic tests become even more ubiquitous.
Partnering and Innovating
The thought of working with industry causes some in the NHS to shrink back in fear – however a number of speakers mentioned the advantages to the patients, the NHS, and themselves. The challenge is in ensuring that the NHS and our patients get the benefit of such collaborations as much as commercial companies do.
One of the main themes of the two days
Dr Liz Mear, Chief Executive of the Innovation Agency spoke of the work being done with The Academic Health Science Network to help spread innovation more effectively in the NHS so that health can be improved and economic growth generated.
This theme of partnering and innovating was also emphasised by Professor Tony Young OBE, the National Clinical Lead for Innovation at NHS England. He spoke of the Clinical Entrepreneur Programme which gives healthcare professionals the opportunity to develop innovations from within the NHS. From my perspective as a trainee clinical informatician who spends much of my time developing software, it is an exciting indication that there are opportunities for innovation without having to jump over to the private sector. One of the workshops on the second day expanded on this further to point out the benefits of partnering to improve information and knowledge across industry and the NHS through Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.
In Summary
I left the CSO’s Conference with a sense of excitement about the vision for the NHS’ next decade, and the place that Healthcare Scientists can and should have in it. There is always a lot of work to do to go between national policy and local implementations, but I truly think that all of us have a part to play in making that happen, whatever our formal positions. This echoes advice given by Kiran Chauhan, a Senior Development Adviser at NHS Improvement, who gave advice to “get involved beyond your remit and support your organisation more widely”. My take home messages for the future of Healthcare Science, were to seek partnerships to improve our services wherever we can find them and to work across specialisms, disciplines, and professions. After all, we’re all here to get the best for our patients.
We ran our annual STP Winter Training Event on the 17th of December and had a fantastic turn out over 70 trainees from across London and the South East.
Multidisciplinary Healthcare Science
In the morning, trainees worked on multidisciplinary healthcare science case studies to share how their specialism would be involved in different aspects of the patient pathway. Trainees said that they enjoyed learning about other Healthcare Science specialisms from each other and found this a useful opportunity to practice their communication skills.
Clinical Coding
Dr. Caroline Spencer from Guys and St. Thomas’ Hospital helped us understand what clinical coding is, why it is important and how healthcare scientists can help by adding clear information into the patient’s case notes (where appropriate). This training should help with understanding how patient notes are used for national statistics, epidemiology and of course for reimbursement for what was carried out.
Leadership
Next up we had a great interactive session on leadership with Mark Cole from the London Leadership Academy. This covered how complex leadership can be, and how we can be agents for change within the NHS. We can only hope that we’ll do Mark justice in our future careers being pioneers in healthcare.
Sources of support
Katherine Hankins from the Professional Support Unit introduced us to the free support that is available for STPs. There are one to one support sessions, workshops and online courses available to cover assessments, relationships and professionalism, assertiveness, psychological problems and even career planning.
Writing tips
After lunch we were lucky enough to be joined by Miranda France, who is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Great Ormond Street Hospital. She gave us 11 tips for writing better and is also available for any healthcare science trainees in London and the South East to have one to one help with their writing for free.
Healthcare scientists’ potential and how to unleash it
Dr. Elaine Cloutman-Green from Great Ormond Street Hospital gave us an inspirational talk on how much potential healthcare scientists have, and how much we can shape our profession. While the road to success is filled with setbacks, she challenged us to say yes to more opportunities and to let passion, purpose and principles guide us.
Interactive sessions: Help with the STP & Senior Healthcare Scientist Panel
We went for something new this year and had two interactive question sessions using an anonymous question platform.
Our first session was based on questions about how to make the most of your STP training. We had great questions on electives, how to deal with workplace issues, how to ensure you get the best training possible and advice on the STP portfolio. These questions were answered by the other trainees at the event, as well as the board if they could come up with some extra points.
We were very lucky to have a collection of seniorlead healthcare scientists for a panel discussion. Questions related to their roles and how we can feed into them, career planning, driving change, the future of healthcare science and the challenges faced in healthcare science. We’d like to thank all of our panel members for a great session.
Dr. Anna Barnes, University College London Hospitals
Prof. Berne Ferry, National School of Healthcare Sciences
Dawn Clare-Paule, University College London Hospitals
Dr. Elaine Cloutman-Green, Great Ormond Street Hospital
Dr. Emma Walker, Imperial College Healthcare Trust
Mark Squirrell, Guys and St. Thomas’ Hospital
Michelle Martin, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospital
Dr. Phillipa May, Royal Free London
A Clinical Scientist’s Journey
To wrap up our last session, Professor Berne Ferry (Head of the National School of Healthcare Science) gave us an overview of her career to get to this point, where we can aim with our careers, and how the National School is there to support us.
Thanks from The Co-Chairs
First of all, we’re very grateful to all of speakers and panelists who gave up their time to help run the sessions. Secondly, we went larger with this event than we’ve done before and are glad that we had such great engagement from all the trainees who attended. We’d like to give a final thank you to the whole of the London Healthcare Scientist Trainee Network Board for their exceptional work to organise and facilitate the event.
Stefan Piatek & Haroon Chughtai Co-Chairs, LondonHCSTN
On the 27th September some members of the
LondonHCSTN board were given the opportunity to host our own workshop at the
annual Healthcare Science Education event delivered by NECL healthcare
scientists. The whole day was a fantastic event full of inspirational speakers
and enthusiasm for healthcare science education.
The afternoon was formed of concurrent workshops including
our own workshop which focused around portfolio based learning!
The workshop was aimed at discussing the challenges of
portfolio based learning and working together to come up with means to address
the challenges. We were fortunate to have a range of attendees including
portfolio-based trainees, training officers and training assessors who were all
able to give different perspectives on understanding and addressing the
challenges.
Five main challenges were posed to the attendees to discuss
and feed back on, we have listed these below with some helpful suggestions from
participants.
Placement
competencies – who signs them off and what to do if they are unreachable
Organise delivery of training with responsible
individuals prior to training commencement, it is then clear who is responsible
for what, and workload can be anticipated ahead of time
Take advantage of OneFile’s ability to remind
people on your behalf!
Competences that are
outside the scope of your specialism’s practice, or where no training has been
given
Feed back to the NSHCS that specific competences
outside the scope of practice should be instead treated as experiential
learning
Have a verbal conversation with a reviewer which
is then submitted as video evidence
‘Take the spirit’ of the competence and apply it
to something within the scope of practice
Different
expectations of detail and competence
Use existing laboratory policies for competence
in practice and apply these to training
Set up a training committee within the Trust to
standardise and improve training
Share accepted competencies between trainees and
trainers to establish what should be expected
Getting acceptable
work signed off quickly
Incentivise trainers by emphasising the benefit
of training for CPD
Keep competencies concise to reduce workload for
trainers and trainees
Knowing who will
train and assess the competency and the time frame for this
Establish good communication between the host
department and rotational departments
Establish a contingency plan for if a member of
staff leaves unexpectedly during training
We would like to say a big thank you to all those who
attended the workshop and provided such good feedback to help us all to tackle
these challenges going forward.
Every month the trainee network board meets to discuss in depth, items raised through remote communication during the preceding month. These may be for the organisation of our events, discussion of feedback, or coordination of other network activities.
Below you can find a summary of what we discussed at the last meeting. If you’d like something discussed at the next meeting, please drop us an email.
Another thank you to all of those trainees who attended our OSFA event in May, we hope you found it as useful and informative as we all did!
Just a brief summary of the event for those who couldn’t make it, and for those who are considering attending next year’s event, here’s what it entailed:
The London HCSTN 