Category: LondonHCSTN

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

The London Healthcare Science Trainee Network (HCSTN) held their PTP Winter Event on Wednesday 13^th December 2017.

Continue reading “PTP Winter Event 2017 Summary” →

We had an oversubscribed and great OSFA event with over 50 STP trainees attending. The day started with an introduction to the OSFA process by Kimberly Gilmour, Consultant Clinical Scientist at Great Ormond Street Hospital (and OSFA extraordinaire!) Kimberly was then joined by colleague Elizabeth Ralph and provided some entertaining demonstrations of OSFA scenarios. Trainees then took a turn at writing their own generic OSFA stations, a useful exercise to understand what assessors are looking for during the OSFA marking process.

After a light lunch, there was a Q&A session with OSFA assessors and training officers Sarah Peel, Jeffery Davison, Karen Marks and Paul Ganney answering trainee questions covering the OSFA process, common mistakes and tips for preparation. Trainees were then split into groups of three and worked through the stations they had written in the morning session. This was an invaluable opportunity to practice ahead of the upcoming OSFAs in July.

Thanks again to all who attended and especially those who helped out!

On 14th December, we held our 2016 STP Winter Event. It was a great event with STPs across all year groups and spanning a wide range of specialisms.

In the morning we practiced communication skills, explaining to our groups how our specialism contributes to the diagnosis and monitoring of clinical cases. Then Dr Fiona Lethbridge (Senior Press Officer, Science Media Centre) and Katrina Nevin-Ridley (Director of Communications, Genomics England) gave fantastic communication skills and media engagement talks!

Next we had a themed session: the role of healthcare science in trauma pathways. Exciting talks summarised the work of specialisms, many thanks to Lisa Garrison (Senior Clinical Scientist, St George’s Hospital) and current STP trainees, Louisa Ive (Genetics, St George’s Hospital), Amy Bolsworth (Vascular Sciences, Barts Health) and Sarah Blow (Histopathology & Immunology , Hammersmith Hospital).

In the afternoon, trainees took part in a intense ethics training workshop from Dr Kimberly Gilmour (Clinical Lead for Immunology, Great Ormond Street Hospital). This interactive session covered topics such as consent, confidentiality, respect and the guidelines we must all adhere to as healthcare scientists. Finally, we heard from the London and South East Professional Development Team about the support that is available for STP trainees during their training. Once again, thank you to all of our speakers and attendees that made the day a great success.