Improving the availability and uptake of educational opportunities amongst O&G junior doctors in a tertiary hospital setting
Vandermolen, B; Stokes, J; Maksym, K; Whitten, M. 

BACKGROUND

With an ever-increasing workload, ensuring that junior doctors are available for, and aware of educational opportunities provided for them can be a challenge. Morale and team-working can be affected by remote-learning and fragmented team structures. 

A Quality Improvement Project [QUIPP] was carried out to understand the culture towards teaching as well as to improve attendance and engagement with local educational opportunities. A prospective cohort study of junior doctors working in a tertiary-level Obstetrics & Gynaecology department was carried out in 2022.

 

METHODS

An online survey of junior doctors was conducted to determine current experiences & perspectives regarding educational opportunities in the department, using a mixture of multiple choice, Likert scale, & free-text questions. Following this, a series of changes were introduced; which involved working with specialist teams to identify all potential teaching opportunities, including MDTs and M&Ms. The curriculum-based protected teaching programme was also refreshed. 

A new weekly newsletter was created and disseminated to circulate links to teaching, to curate & share news, learning points for practice and promote study courses. 

The survey was then repeated 6 months later. 

Data was collected & analyzed using Excel. 

 

RESULTS

There were 23 responses to the survey; 30% SHOs, 39% Registrars, 26% consultants, and 1% managers.

This series of interventions increased the proportion who felt confident they were aware of available teaching opportunities from 57% to 89%. Attendance at weekly teaching increased from 29% to 53%.

Following intervention, 72% felt they never missed teaching dates because they are unaware, and 100% felt they had the opportunity to join MDT meetings that would be relevant to their training. 

Seventy-nine percent read the newsletter every week, and the remaining 21% read it most weeks. Ninety-five percent feel more connected to educational opportunities available as a result of the newsletter. Intervention increased the average rating of educational opportunities in the department from 8.4/10 to 9.4/10.

 

CONCLUSION

This QUIPP demonstrates that the awareness around, and uptake of high-quality teaching during working hours of a busy tertiary hospital can be enhanced by creation of a unified information platform. This can lead to improvement of both the quality of training and care delivered, and also the overall morale and experience of junior doctors. 

 

Enthusiasm for delivering training exists; by utilising different platforms, and minimising email frequency, awareness and engagement can be optimised without increasing the intensity or frequency of teaching sessions.