Are you missing out on valuable CPD hours?
Incorporating teaching and supervision into your professional development not only helps you tick off your CPD Home program hours, but can help you grow both personally and professionally. Here’s how.
The value of teaching and supervision in CPD
As clinicians, we all understand the importance of lifelong learning and continuing professional development (CPD). While there are many ways to achieve this, one often overlooked aspect is teaching and supervision of others.
Teaching and supervising others have numerous benefits for personal and professional growth. Not only do these activities refresh your knowledge and keep you up-to-date with the latest practices and research, but they also challenge your own beliefs and knowledge.
Teaching can help disseminate ideas across the industry too. Students often learn from multiple teachers, and they can bring these ideas to your teaching sessions. In this way, teaching can help ensure we don’t become too fixed in our ways.
Furthermore, teaching and supervision allow you to reflect on your own practice and teaching methods, an important component of your job description.
How to include teaching and supervision in your practice
While it can be challenging to balance clinical responsibilities with teaching and supervision, there are many ways to incorporate it into your daily practice. One approach is to use clinical moments as teaching opportunities. With a little imagination and practice, almost anything can be turned into a teaching moment. For example, you can ask your juniors to explain how a piece of equipment works or review blood tests and ask them for their thoughts.
Assessing students and junior doctors can highlight areas of your own practice to work on.
Additionally, you may want to consider protected non-clinical teaching time or taking fractional appointments, which give you specific teaching hours. This can provide dedicated time for teaching and preparation.
Importantly, regardless of how experienced you are, you’ll likely be able to claim all this time as part of your CPD Home program. Using an easy-to-use app like Osler to keep track of your activity is essential to ensure you can capture it all.
How to get better at teaching and supervision
Evaluating the effectiveness of your teaching and supervision efforts is key to improving your skills. You can self-reflect and use a simple "Plus/Delta" analysis or specifically ask for feedback from your participants. Critically, it's essential to set the expectation and culture within the group of openness and honesty to receive genuine feedback, as junior staff have a habit of telling you what they think you want to hear.
Another way to improve your skills is to seek resources and support. Approach medical education officers in your hospital or tap into local university resources. General reading about teaching approaches or doing a course like "Teaching on the Run" can also be helpful.
Becoming an instructor on popular courses such as BASIC, EMST / ATLS, PALS / APLS or ALS usually involve undergoing training on how to teach. These programs provide invaluable learning on teaching methods in a clinical setting.
You can also level-up your teaching through collaborative groups like the Clinical Educator Incubator program, which provides guidance through a community of practice online.
Finally, you can also undertake formal training through a number of university courses, such as this example
In summary, teaching and supervision are valuable components of your CPD. By incorporating these activities into your practice, you can refresh your knowledge, challenge your beliefs, and improve your teaching and supervisory skills. Remember to evaluate your efforts and seek resources and support to level-up your skills.
If you’re interested in taking your skills to the next level, keep an eye on this site or head over to Osler for more