In each academic year, four cycles of students undertake a rotation in Child Health.
Previously student feedback has been varied and consequently the Trust has employed four designated teaching fellows to improve student experience in Child Health.
The Teaching Fellows are all post-Foundation Programme doctors, have an interest in paediatrics as a career and are actively involved in the development of the student experience at GNCH. As part of these roles, each Fellow has or is undertaking professional qualifications in medical education allowing expertise in the structuring of knowledge transfer. This ensures that medical education delivered is evidence based with focus on key themes, rather than indiscriminate delivery of facts
This review looks at the feedback received from the Stage 5 students of 2014 and 2015. Students completed online feedback forms provided by Newcastle University. Students were asked to rate 5 areas of the rotation (facilities; organisation and induction; delivery of scheduled teaching; learning environment and support; feedback and assessment). Finally, they were asked to provide a response to “How would you rate the quality of the placement overall?”
The results are compiled by the University to analyse student satisfaction. Since the employment of Teaching Fellows in August 2015, feedback obtained from the students shows an overall improvement in satisfaction.
Satisfaction ratings for quality of the placement overall in 2014 were 88%, 40%, 43% and 27% for the four cycles of students.
In 2015, once Teaching Fellows were introduced, equivalent responses were 88%, 100%, 100% and 100% for the respective 4 cycles of students.
Comments included:
“…teaching fellows were excellent always available to help and give feedback” “The use of teaching fellows was excellent, I feel the placement would have been a lot less useful without”
By employing teaching fellows, the Trust has created an improved infrastructure for Child Health teaching. This dedicated teaching team creates a high quality learning environment.
This has been achieved through focusing on the hierarchical needs3 of students and their learning outcomes as opposed to teachers imparting their specialist knowledge arbitrarily. The overall impact of this could be assessed in the future, by comparing student attainment of those placed at GNCH year on year.