Category: Training

Posted in Events, Spring Event 2022, Training

LondonHCSTN Spring Event 2022 IACC Q&A

Posted on by londonhcstn

As part of the IACC session in our recent Spring Event, we were kindly joined by Professor Berne Ferry (Head of NSHCS, Dean for Healthcare Science) and Carol Higgison (Head of Assessment NSHCS), who helped to answer some of the questions put forward by attendees.

7th Mar 2022

Q: What should the timescale be for completing the IACC? When should we be starting this?

A reminder that the IACC is 3500 words narrative and 45 min interview. Deadline for the narrative is 16th June. It is strongly recommended not to leave this to the last minute and to try and work on getting your competencies signed off and drafting the sections of your critical reflective narrative to identify what additional evidence you may need.

Q: What are some major changes to the IACC & panel interview this year compared to last year?

Guidance is similar to last year, but trainees should use the most recent 2021 version of the Academy of Healthcare Science the Good Scientific Practice (GSP) https://www.ahcs.ac.uk/standards/. The interview will potentially include one or two scenario-based questions.

Q: For current Year 1s and Year 2s, will future completion likely revert back to an OSFA style assessment?

There is currently no plan to revert back to the OSFA style assessment. The IACC assessment is still new and so will continue to be improved between years.

Q: How do you recommend we prepare for the panel interview? Will it be based on our knowledge of the subject?

The panel interview will be assessing your readiness to practice and will include some scenario-based questions that will cover or more GSP domains, professional practice, and core modules. Ensure you are clearly identifying which GSP competencies are important for your role. You should still be targeting 100% completion of your portfolio for the IACC, but you can also explain how COVID has impacted your learning. It will be recognised that the IACC interview takes place 3 months before the deadline to fully complete your OneFile portfolio.

Q: What depth of reflection is expected within the IACC – do we need to say how our experiences made us feel and what we learnt?

Reflection is designed to help us process our emotions and learnings. The reflection in the narrative will be about reflecting on experiences, and focused on what you have learned and how you translate that into current practice E.g. Did this give you insight into how to approach a new scenario?

Q: Should we aim to cover every single bullet point within the good scientific practice guide?

The narrative should be a higher level synthesis and summary of your experience, rather than trying to cover every single bullet point. You need to create a narrative of your achievements,  development and learning.

Q: Do we need to be reflective in our competencies or just in the narrative?

Yes, if you are already being reflective in OneFile competencies this will be useful for the narrative. If you feel the level of reflection in your portfolio is currently lacking, it may be worthwhile revisiting these competencies.

Q: Do we need to try and cover as many of the Good scientific practice points as possible or a few but in greater depth?

This would be more of an individual choice and trainees should discuss this with their supervisor.

Q: Why haven’t we had any official communication from the national school about the IACC?

There has already been communication about the dates of submission and interviews currently published on the NSHCS website. Monthly updates will be included in the STP Monthly memo from March 2022. Trainees can also contact the official assessment email NSHCS.assessment@hee.nhs.uk with any questions.

Q: Are there examples of good reflective narratives we can have access to?

Since the narratives are on a ‘pass/fail’ criteria, not easy to say which was particularly ‘good’. The NSHCS do want to share examples of some previous narratives and are currently looking into getting permission from authors of these examples.

Q: Will the scenario situations ever be with patient actors?

No this will not happen with the IACC.

Q: For specialisms where you can do the competencies in a range of departments how do you ensure our assessor is from a relevant area?

Q: How does the school decide who your panel interviewers should be?

Interviewer panel will be experts in your specialty but will not be your own training officer. This year there will be a drive to broaden recruitment to a wider panel. While it is recognised that different specialisms will have different requirements and priorities, there will still be an aim to standardise the equivalence of questions asked in the panel.

Q: Will there be any webinars or additional information about the IAAC from the school?

Look out for the STP monthly memo for additional information webinars and support sessions coming up. The March memo is due to provide more information. https://nshcs.hee.nhs.uk/about/nshcs-newsletter/stp-monthly-memo/

Summary by Katie Cheswick, Charlotte Jones and Linda Shi, posted with permission from Berne & Carol. Q&A session facilitated by Gabriel Santos & Linda Shi.

Posted in HCS Education, Health, Medical, Training

UCL Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre releases an online deaf awareness training course for Audiologists

Posted on by londonhcstn

There’s a new online course for Audiologists who want to acquire skills to:

  • Employ appropriate behaviours and language when interacting with deaf and hard of hearing (HoH) patients
  • Distinguish between communication preferences and adapt your communication to the patient’s needs
  • Recognise legal requirements (Equality Act, 2010 and Accessible Information Standard, 2016) to provide reasonable adjustments related to disability
  • Identify commonly used assistive technologies and apply them to the needs of the patient. AND Learn at your own pace.

Accredited by British Society of Audiology for CPD.

Cost – £39.00

More information can be found at http://bit.ly/DCAL_DA_Aud

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.

Posted in Events, Medical, Meeting Summaries, Training, Uncategorized

CSO’s Annual Conference 2019 – #LTF2030

Posted on by londonhcstn

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.

Posted in Events, LondonHCSTN, Training

STP Winter Event 2018

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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

Posted in Events, LondonHCSTN, Training

OSFA Training Day

Posted on by londonhcstn

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!

Posted in Events, LondonHCSTN, Training

Winter Training Event 2016

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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.