Blogs, Projects, HLA and Principles of Learning

I don't think I've commented on what inspired me to make this blog.

Blog

But it was a blog called 'Grumpy Biomed' - diary of a quintessential Biomedical Science student dreaming of studying medicine. He also flirted with the idea of postgraduate degrees but eventually got into Warwick for the 2011/12 Academic Year. Around this time, there really wasn't anyone else who chronicled their feelings so regularly, beautifully and so relateably.

The blog has since sadly been deleted and his follow-up medical school blog has gone too. Until I came across Paeds Registrar who has just been awarded a Paeds Oncology Training Post. She has chronicled all her stories back to the penultimate year of medical school. She also did a Biomedical Science Degree. And boy, has her blog got me excited to start writing again.

Projects

I got the HLA Scholarship! Since then, my project on 'better understanding how prepared future doctors are to work with AI' picked up one of the Best Poster Prizes at the November Conference. I actually thought I missed the deadline to submit but it was a delightful surprise and a great boost of energy to continue to build my project. Lots of exciting themes to come soon - Surveys, Journal Clubs, Virtual Electives and hopefully an article that might be published one day!

Why you should join the HLA? - I'm not paid to say this - its just really good.

So many incredible people exist within this organisation - high output academics, publically vocal juniors and healthcare professioanls across seemingly every specialty and subspecialty. It is a really rich source of human talent. The educational sessions are unbelievably inspiring. They will give feedback on exactly how they see it, there's no veil of politeness, this is what you could have done.The opportunities within this organisation are plentiful. As one scholar once said, once you're part of the HLA, you never really leave. It certainly does seem true.

Principles of Learning

One of the other things the HLA has helped me appreciate is people's perspectives. How people think on the reverse or blind-side?

Reverse: Say you're trying to implement a campaign advocating for structured breaks in junior doctor shifts? We all agree it should occur but why does it not occur? Okay, there are issues beyond our control and even if mandated, why would we not take breaks? So the bigger question is how do we encourage breaks? This series of repeated questions of why turns eventually into a how - how can we improve.

Blind: Say you've got a junior doctor ward who are always busy and seemingly stressed. How can you improve their lives? Is it because they're short-staffed? Is it because there are too few nurses? Is it because they are unprepared? If it is because they're short-staffed? Why is this occuring? How can we improve this? What could be our plan? In this case, the solution is not obvious but be can help our cause by asking lots of follow-up questions and deducing a key question.

I think one thing I've learnt this term, particularly when at revision sessions for Finals, is taking things back to first principles 1) identifying assumptions 2) breaking down the problem 3) creating new solutions.

e.g. do Medical Students need to know about Coding skills?

1) Wait why would they even need to know?

2) Personal projects, research projects, they will not be troubleshooting big organisational software programmes.

3) How can we encourage positive uptake of coding skills as means of encouraging students to further their interest in particular careers e.g. oncology?