The 2022 Annual Teachers Conference took place on Wednesday 15 June 2022.

This year we welcomed three Imperial College London medical students, Thivyaa, Hamza and Hareef as our keynote speakers. The students shared stories of their unique and inspiring journeys into medical school and the experiences that have shaped them as medical students. They discussed what it means to them to belong within the medical school and the power of relationships and connections in forming their identities as future doctors.

A question and answer session with the audience followed their keynote presentations.

The stories that connect us

Keynote: The stories that connect us

Introduced by Dr Nina Dutta, Year 3 MICA Course Lead and Faculty Development Lead
Hareef Asunramu, Year 5 Imperial College Medical Student
Gayathri Thivyaa Gangatharan, Year 4 Imperial College Medical Student
Hamza Ikhlaq, Year 4 Imperial College Medical Student

 

Programme

9.00am  Registration
Coffee, tea and breakfast pastries
Reynolds Building
9.30am Welcome
Prof Sonia Kumar, Director of Undergraduate Primary Care Education
Prof Azeem Majeed, Head of Department, Primary Care & Public Health, School of Public Health
Drewe Lecture Theatre
9.40am Keynote: The stories that connect us
Thivyaa Gangatharan, Hamza Ikhlaq, Hareef Asunramu, Imperial College Medical Students
Dr Nina Dutta, Year 3 MICA Course Lead and Faculty Development Lead, Imperial College London
Drewe Lecture Theatre
10.30am Faculty-Student-Community partnerships during the COVID-19 pandemic
Dr Arti Maini and students
Dr Neha Ahuja and I-Explore students
Drewe Lecture Theatre 
11.05am Break
Coffee, tea and treats
Reynolds Building 
11.25am Morning workshops
See below for details
Reynolds Building 
12.40pm Lunch Reynolds Building 
1.40pm Afternoon workshops
See below for details
Reynolds Building 
2.55pm  Break
Coffee, tea and canapés 
Reynolds Building 
3.10pm  Student presentations of award-winning projects
Introduced and presented by Course Leads
Drewe Lecture Theatre 
4.00pm  Teacher awards
Presented by Prof Sonia Kumar and Ms Nadine Engineer
Drewe Lecture Theatre  
4.30pm  Drinks on the terrace  Glenister Terrace 

Workshops

1. Inclusive medical education

This workshop will focus on how to make our educational approaches more inclusive. Working alongside our medical students, we look forward to using this workshop as a space to reflect on personal experiences, including the challenges of embedding inclusivity in medical education, and consider how best to overcome any barriers.

Facilitators:
Dr Neha Ahuja – Clinical Teaching Fellow in Primary Care, Imperial College London
Dr Zoe Moula – Research Fellow, Medical Education Innovation and Research Centre, Imperial College London
Dr Meysoon Qurashi – GP ST1 trainee – Central Middlesex VTS training scheme

2. Integrating sustainable healthcare into the undergraduate medical curriculum

Climate change is widely recognised as a health emergency. The GMC, NHS and WHO have emphasised the importance of teaching sustainable healthcare principles to medical students. In this workshop, we will discuss the reasons why sustainable healthcare is so important. We will explore the challenges we face with integrating sustainability within the curriculum, and the successes we have had so far. We will round off this workshop with an open dialogue on your experiences of sustainable healthcare.

Facilitators:
Dr Renee Ewe – Academic Clinical Fellow (ACF) trainee ST4
Dr Alisa Jivraj – GP ST2 trainee – Ealing VTS training programme
Christine Pettitt and Giulia Iacona – 4th Year Imperial College Medical students

3. Supporting students with remote consultations

Please join us for this interactive workshop, where we will cover practical steps and suggestions for how to support students with remote consulting.  From providing you some top tips to teach students when remote consulting (e.g. effective examination techniques), to working out the logistics of how to involve students in remote consulting in a busy clinic environment, we would like to give you tangible takeaways to apply in your practice. The workshop will be a combination of taught content and small group working, with some handy crib sheets to go home with.

Facilitators:
Dr Sian Powell – Year 6 Course Lead and Senior Clinical Teaching Fellow, Imperial College London
Dr Martha Martin - Academic Clinical Fellow (ACF) trainee ST3

4. Yoga and mindfulness in a chaotic modern world: a practical workshop

Yoga and Mindfulness have their origins in ancient traditions that have been around for thousands of years, but in 2020, the pandemic fuelled momentum for many of us to discover and explore these practices. 

Modern living is stressful. We are inundated by information and distractions. Our days can seem to be a tangle of thoughts and endless activity as we strive to ‘catch up” with ourselves. The crisis, uncertainty and fear surrounding the pandemic added to our stress and many of us searched for comfort and release, turning to yoga and mindfulness as coping mechanisms.

In this workshop we will explore:

Where does yoga and mindfulness fit into our lives now? How can we use it moving forward? How does it fit into our clinical and teaching practice?

Join Gail, Alisha, and Sarah, for a practical yoga and mindfulness workshop, including asana, pranayama, and meditation.  We hope to share our experiences of how yoga and mindfulness have influenced and improved our wellbeing within and beyond medicine and teaching. 

This is a fun, practical session suitable for all levels. Please wear comfortable clothing. Mats will be provided.

Facilitators:
Ms Gail Davies – Independent qualified yoga tutor
Dr Nikul Kotecha – GP ST2 trainee, Out of Programme Experience trainee, Imperial College London 
Dr Alisha Khanna – GP ST2 trainee, Imperial College VTS training scheme
Sarah Stephen – Year 3 Medical student, Imperial College London, Vinyasa Yoga Practice qualified tutor

5. Arts, health and wellbeing - creative approaches to medical education

How can the arts enhance medical student self-reflection and empathy? Can arts-based approaches provide students with a creative tool with which to better understand patient wellbeing during clinical placements?

This experiential workshop will explore the value of the arts for medical students, patients and communities and will include creative and reflective exercises.

All materials provided. No arts experience necessary!

Facilitators:
Dr Neepa Thacker – Year 5 Course Lead, Imperial College London
Ali Winstanley – Health and Wellbeing consultant and facilitator  

6. Coaching skills in healthcare and medical education

Coaching approaches involve working in partnership with people to support them to identify and address what matters to them. In this interactive, experiential workshop, you will become familiar with some key coaching principles and skills and explore how these could be applied in your own educational and healthcare contexts with students and patients.

Facilitators:
Dr Arti Maini – Deputy Director of Undergraduate Primary Care Education, Imperial College London
Mr Hamza Ikhlaq – Year 5 Medical student, Imperial College London

7. Personalised care: teaching students to care for me, not for my diseases

Personalised medical care involves the 4Ps:

  • Predictive
  • Preventive
  • Personalised
  • Participatory

In this interactive workshop, we will explore how to teach medical students about personalised medicine. What is personalised healthcare? How could students learn about this? And how can we support students to learn about personalised care during clinical placements, including examples of how our GP tutors and faculty have been supporting this e.g. community projects, conversations with patients and health coaching, and teaching about social prescribing and wider determinants

Facilitators:
Dr Viral Thakerar – Year 1 & 2 Primary Care Course Lead, Imperial College London

8. Training our whole workforce with generalist skills

Are you frustrated by the turbulence of the journey that patients experience when navigating the healthcare system? This is particularly true for those who are least able to advocate for themselves. ‘Care’ can be fragmented, repetitive and bewildering. As our ageing population with multiple co-morbidities becomes increasingly complex to manage, is current siloed training fit-for-purpose?

This interactive workshop will address the re-thinking of training with the vision that all clinicians can be equipped with a broad set of skills and attributes. We will be joined by Rupal Shah and Monika Gupta from Health Education England (HEE) who are working on the Enhance Generalist Skills Programme, and will discuss the future direction of training to ensure all of our workforce is equipped with essential generalist skills.

And where better to start than undergraduate training! By the end of this workshop we hope that you can take away some key generalist principles to apply to teaching of undergraduates within your practice.

Facilitators:
Dr Vanessa Sivam – Year 5 Primary Care Course Lead, Imperial College London
Dr Rupal Shah – Educational Lead, Health Education England
Ms Monika Gupta – Service Delivery Manager, Health Education England