Leadership and followership in the healthcare workplace: exploring medical trainees' experiences through narrative inquiry.

Objectives: To explore medical trainees' experiences of leadership and followership in the interprofessional healthcare workplace.

Design: A qualitative approach using narrative interviewing techniques in 11 group and 19 individual interviews with UK medical trainees.

Setting: Multisite study across four UK health boards.

Dimensions, discourses and differences: trainees conceptualising health care leadership and followership.

Context: As doctors in all specialties are expected to undertake leadership within health care organisations, leadership development has become an inherent part of medical education. Whereas the leadership literature within medical education remains mostly focused on individual, hierarchical leadership, contemporary theory posits leadership as a group process, which should be distributed across all levels of health care organisation. This gap between theory and practice indicates that there is a need to understand what leadership and followership mean to medical trainees working in today's interprofessional health care workplace.

Exploring stakeholders' views of medical education research priorities: a national survey.

Context: Setting research priorities is important when exploring complex issues with limited resources. Only two countries (Canada and New Zealand) have previously conducted priority-setting exercises for medical education research (MER). This study aimed to identify the views of multiple stakeholders on MER priorities in Scotland.

Patient safety and communication: a new assessment for doctors trained in countries where language differs from that of the host country: results of a pilot using a domain-based assessment.

Objective: Global migration of healthcare workers places responsibility on employers to comply with legal employment rights whilst ensuring patient safety remains the central goal. We describe the pilot of a communication assessment designed for doctors who trained and communicated with patients and colleagues in a different language from that of the host country. It is unique in assessing clinical communication without assessing knowledge.

Making sense of feedback experiences: a multi-school study of medical students' narratives.

Context: Until recently, the perspective of students in the feedback process has been ignored, with strategies for improvement focusing on the tutor and feedback delivery. We employed an original narrative interviewing approach to explore how medical students make sense of their experiences of feedback.

Methods: A qualitative design was adopted employing three individual and 10 group interviews to elicit narratives of feedback experiences from 53 medical students at three 5-year undergraduate programmes in the UK during 2011.

Levels of reflective thinking and patient safety: an investigation of the mechanisms that impact on student learning in a single cohort over a 5 year curriculum.

Existing research into learning about patient safety focuses on identifying how educational interventions improve educational outcomes but few studies offer evidence that inform educators about the mechanisms involved in learning about patient safety. The current evidence based in undergraduates is also limited to outcomes that relate to knowledge and skills. A realist approach involving three cycles of data collection in a single cohort of students over 5 years used different outcomes in Kirkpatrick's framework to identify the mechanisms that influence students learning about patient safety.

Perceived causes of prescribing errors by junior doctors in hospital inpatients: a study from the PROTECT programme.

Introduction: Prescribing errors are a major cause of patient safety incidents. Understanding the underlying factors is essential in developing interventions to address this problem. This study aimed to investigate the perceived causes of prescribing errors among foundation (junior) doctors in Scotland.

Student perceptions of a portfolio assessment process.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to identify and analyse students' attitudes to the portfolio assessment process over time.

Methods: A questionnaire containing statements and open questions was used to obtain feedback from students at the University of Dundee Medical School, Scotland. The responses to each statement were compared over 4 years (1999, 2000, 2002 and 2003).

A learning package for medical students in a busy urology department: design, implementation, and evaluation.

Objectives: The need for innovation in the delivery of quality teaching and learning for undergraduates in urology is driven by a number of factors. An increasing proportion of care is delivered in ambulatory settings, hospital inpatients are increasingly unwell, and the National Health Service staff must find a balance in their dual roles as healthcare providers and clinical teachers. We describe the design, implementation, and evaluation of an innovative learning package for undergraduate medical students in urology.

Use of simulated patients for a communication skills exercise.

This article describes a training programme for people simulating the role of a patient with aphasia. Using the skills they had learned, the simulated patients (SPs) eventually took part in a pilot communication skills exercise, in which 86 nursing students participated and which was evaluated using a semi-structured questionnaire. The students reported that the SPs' portrayal of a patient with aphasia was realistic and appreciated being given the opportunity to rehearse safely in a simulated healthcare setting.

Can a ward simulation exercise achieve the realism that reflects the complexity of everyday practice junior doctors encounter?

Recent changes in medical education have resulted in an increased focus on patient safety. It is vital that new doctors can recognize and manage acutely-ill patients, as well as work safely and effectively as a member of a multi-professional team. A ward simulation exercise has been developed to provide a safe, but authentic setting to support junior doctors with further practice and feedback.

Twelve tips for developing and maintaining a simulated patient bank.

Simulated patients have become almost indispensable in the education and training of health care professionals. Their contribution to the creation of a safe, yet realistic, learner centred environment is invaluable. Their support in enabling learners at all stages of their professional careers to develop both competence and confidence through repeated practice helps to ensure that learning from real patients can be maximized.

An outcome-based approach for teaching prudent antimicrobial prescribing to undergraduate medical students: report of a Working Party of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.

Antibiotic resistance is on the increase. This is evidenced by the almost daily publication of related articles in both professional journals and the media. The Department of Health and the Scottish Executive have published strategies and action plans that highlight the need for prudent use of antimicrobials.

Information-sharing strategies to support practising clinicians in their clinical teaching roles.

If the involvement of practising clinicians in undergraduate clinical teaching is to be retained, strategies that inform them of student expectations and show how their contribution can be integrated to the wider clinical teaching programme must be identified. A variety of information-sharing strategies has been designed and used to communicate with clinicians teaching in Phase 2 of the undergraduate medical curriculum in Dundee. Evaluation of these by the clinical teaching staff has indicated that briefing by students, posters and tutor manuals are more successful information-sharing strategies than formal staff-development sessions.

Twelve tips for setting up an ambulatory care (outpatient) teaching centre.

The ambulatory care setting is becoming an increasingly important environment for clinical teaching. This reflects the changing focus of healthcare delivery with more procedures and patient treatment being delivered in this setting. Maximizing learning opportunities for students without compromising patient care has never provided a greater challenge.

Using the Ambulatory Care Teaching Centre to develop opportunities for integrated learning.

An Ambulatory Care Teaching Centre (ACTC) has provided an opportunity to develop an integrated teaching programme in a supervised environment which links students' initial clinical experiences in the skills centre with patient-contact in other teaching settings. Second-year students attended 2-h sessions in the ACTC during each block of a systems-based course. Two 'system-sensitive' patients invited from a patient bank enabled students to develop clinical skills previously practised on mannequins and simulated patients and to integrate theoretical material with clinical practice.