10 Years of Blogging

I’ve also just realised that this month makes it 10 years since I started this blog – 10 YEARS.

Wow, this means I’ve documented more than a third of my life so far on here, and I can’t believe how quickly time has flown by.

I’ve come a long way from 18 year old me, who initially started this blog to document gap year adventures because I had no medical school offers- I’m now two years away (by God’s grace) from becoming a qualified GP. Really wish I could go back and tell my 18 year old self that it would all work out – look at what God did!

Thank you so much to anyone who has followed this blog or read even just one post of the hundreds I’ve written over the years. From life as a medical student, to foundation training, being a Clinical Teaching Fellow, and now GP training, I appreciate you for stopping by and reading my ramblings – here’s to more of them to come 🙂

The End Of My Year As A Clinical Teaching Fellow

I’ve been telling everyone I know who is currently during their foundation training (FY1/FY2) and considering taking a year out after F2 to definitely do it. F3 allllllll the way!

This year for me has probably been my favourite year as a doctor, because I was very lucky to be able to create my dream job – combining ward work on AMU, with two days a week of medical student teaching, as well as working with the Improvement Team to help the Trust and medical school support ethnic minorities more. I even had half a day of study time a week for PGCert work that was fully funded as part of my role too, what an absolute dream!

Being a CTF has made me realise that I want a career that allows me to be as flexible as this year has been, and that is one of the many reasons why I want to be a GP, but a separate post on the next stage of my training will be coming soon…

I am so so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had this year, and I’m so proud of all we’ve achieved. Some highlights from this term:

• Launching a cookbook with contributions from staff to celebrate the diversity of our Trust, as well as support local businesses that sell the ingredients mentioned in the recipes. Proceeds from the cookbook will support the local hospital charity, and the aim going forward is for the cookbook to be included as part of a welcome pack for trainees who rotate to the Trust. Induction to a new role shouldn’t just be about the clinical aspects of it – new starters should also be welcomed to and introduced the local community.
• My Trust launching an online reporting system for racism, based on some of the experiences I shared.
• Saying goodbye to the students I’ve been teaching this year was sad, but I’m so so proud of how far my year 1s have come, and how much their confidence has grown with talking to patients. Definitely felt like a proud parent by the end!
• Passing my second PGCert assignment – YAY. Two modules down, one to go!
• Making progress with the two possible publications I’m working on with my supervisor and a professor at the university, hopefully more to come on this…
• Completing another quality improvement project on increasing the documentation of CURB65 scores for patients with community acquired pneumonia, to improve antibiotic prescription according to Trust guidelines. I presented our findings to the Pharmacy and Infectious Disease teams, which was definitely very intimidating, but it went okay!

And last but most certainly not least, getting my contract as a Honorary Lecturer at the medical school extended till 2024. Yupp you read right, 2024! This means that I will continue to help with the delivery of lectures on racism in healthcare for the health and society module. EXCITING TIMES.

So yeah, what a year. I’ve really enjoyed it and I feel so blessed that it was made possible, because this was definitely a miracle role that was put together for me, so all I have left to say is:

Reflecting On My Second Term As A Clinical Teaching Fellow

I’m watching High School Musical for the first time in nearly a year.

Anyone who follows this blog will know that HSM is my ‘comfort’ film, and I tend to watch it when I’m feeling low, so a minor setback from earlier today is what has led to me putting it on. I’m feeling better though, and The Keen One a.k.a. Kenny reminded me about why we fall, so onwards and upwards!

In other news, two terms down as a clinical teaching fellow – it’s really going by so fast! It won’t be long before I start GP training (more on where I’m going will be coming in another post), so trying to make the most of my final months as a CTF. So without further ado, here are some highlights from this term:

• Moving from being supervised by the Improvement Team to directly reporting to the Chief Medical Officer of the Trust. Definitely a lot more pressure because my new boss has very high expectations, but I’m enjoying it so far.
• Completing a quality improvement project aimed at improving awareness of junior doctors of where and how to report racist microaggressions and discrimination – I’ll be presenting the findings at a conference in May, exciting times!
• Helping to put together and deliver a new series of lectures for gateway and year 1 medical students on racism in healthcare, with the plan for this to be part of the curriculum going forward.
• Helping out with finals OSCEs and getting to be ‘The Voice,’ so fun!
• Ongoing work with the Organisation Development team to update the Trust’s zero tolerance framework re: racism – we’ll be launching an online reporting system soon and hopefully it’ll make it easier to report issues and for staff to get support.
• I got through the first module of my PGCert and remember that essay I was worried about? Feedback from it was so good that it’s now being considered for publication! #wethankGod
• Really enjoyed bedside teaching with my year 1 medical students – I also did some 2nd and 3rd year teaching this term and still feeling like a proud mother when I think of how far they’ve come.

So yeah overall it’s been a very busy but productive term, and I’m still so grateful that this year was made possible for me. All by the grace of God! The CTF team are such a great bunch, and working with them has been so much fun so far – students really do (and say) the darndest things…

Reflecting On My First Term as a Clinical Teaching Fellow

With Omicron cases on the rise in the UK, I’ve been anxiously watching and keeping updated on the news over the last couple of days because I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle another lockdown. In four days, I’m meant to be going down south to spend my first Christmas since I qualified as a doctor with my family, so praying that no new restrictions get in the way of that…

As first term is coming to an end, I thought it would be good to look back on the last couple of months, and how I’ve been getting on with my role as a Clinical Teaching Fellow. For anyone who hasn’t been following this blog, I was miraculously offered this role after I finished FY2, and it allows me to split my time between clinical work in AMU, teaching first year and gateway medical students, as well as working on projects for the Trust Improvement Team to improve support and training for ethnic minority staff. It’s so great because not only is it a role that allows me to do work in areas that I feel passionately about, but the fact that it’s 9 till 5 means no weekends or oncalls! As well as this, I get some university holidays off too, so this means that I can have a whole two weeks off at Christmas, we thank God!

Anyways, here are some highlights from my first term as a CTF:

• Helping to put together an exhibition in collaboration with the local art college to celebrate diversity at the Trust.
• Feeling like a proud mother because my year 1 students, some of who were visibly shaking with nerves when we first started patient bedside teaching, can now confidently take a whole patient history without needing prompting from me.
• Getting involved with the teaching of gateway medical students! As someone who started medical school on the foundation/gateway programme, I am a huge champion of providing more access to medicine, so I’m glad to be a part of it here.
• Starting work on updating our Trust’s zero tolerance framework re: racism and discrimination. I’ve been working with the Organisation Development team, and our hope is to make reporting incidents more clear, as well as to provide more support to staff on the receiving end of both microaggressions and overt racism.
• Delivering a talk on my personal experiences with microaggressions for the third year in a row to FY1s at my Trust as part of mandatory teaching. I’ve been approached by heads of GP schools in the area who are interested in adding it to their curriculum, so that’s been a bit overwhelming but very exciting!
• Working with the medical school to update their health inequalities teaching, as part of their ongoing work to decolonise the med school curriculum. I’ll be helping to deliver a series of lectures in the new year centring on racism as a determinant of health, so I’m really looking forward to that.

And ofcourse, getting to know my fellow CTFs has definitely been another highlight of the last couple of months! I knew quite a few of them already because we were FY1 doctors together, so it’s been great to work with them again and introduce them to #TaieatsThai

Forever grateful to God for all the opportunities I’ve been having, and what a breath of fresh air this job has been so far. I’ve officially sent off my GP application for next year, as I’m now very sure that being a GP is what I want to do, as it’d allow me to create a role similar to the one I have now. Will be updating on how it all goes, but in the mean time, a song to appreciate how great God has been:

“How can you work from home as a doctor?”

This is a question I’ve been getting a lot since I started my new job, so I thought it was time I explained exactly what I do on my non-clinical days.

I’m working as a Clinical Teaching Fellow this year, which means that I have one clinical day on the wards (AMU), two days a week teaching medical students, and the rest of my week is spent working for the Improvement Team of the hospital, which means I get to work from home.

So far I’m really enjoying the #WFH life, as it’s been a welcome break after my hectic FY2 rotations. I’ve mentioned previously that my work for the Improvement Team involves creating teaching resources and working on projects focusing on equality, diversity and inclusion, but what does this actually mean on a day to day basis, you ask? Well, allow me to elaborate!

At the moment, I’m working on a quality improvement project aiming to increase awareness of FY1 doctors in the Trust of where and how to report racist incidents and microaggressions they experience at work – I definitely got (and still get) a lot of these, but I found speaking up about them really overwhelming as an FY1. Being new to working as a doctor, and also being new to the Trust was quite intimidating, and it was made tougher by not knowing where or who to turn to for help, so this is something I want to improve for current FY1s, to be hopefully rolled out to other groups of staff. My Trust is now doing more to support staff when it comes to these issues, so one of my goals this year is to make the whole reporting/escalating process a lot easier and more straightforward.

Part of my work for the Improvement Team involves being a representative for foundation year/junior doctors in various board meetings; trust me, A LOT of meetings happen at executive level in the running of NHS Trusts. It’s been quite eye-opening to be part of these meetings, as they influence the day-to-day lives of staff in the hospital, but there is usually minimal representation of junior doctors. So my job is to bridge the gap between management and junior doctors, and I’ve been giving input on the practical aspects of proposed changes from things like discharge planning and discharge letters, to induction packages and team restructures, so that’s been very cool.

As for the creating resources part of my role, I am currently in the process of conducting interviews with staff across the Trust who comes from under-represented backgrounds. The exhibition we put together last month is part of an ongoing project to improve the experiences of staff who are minorities in the Trust. So these interviews will be used for training of line managers and supervisors, to help them better understand how they can offer more support to their colleagues and employees.

All of this work is linked closely to my role within the medical school, as I’m helping to develop bystander training and communication skills, so the eventual goal is to have the work we do with the students transferred across to train staff at the hospital, which is all very exciting.

So yeah, just a bit of insight into what I do when I’m working from home – I feel so blessed to have been given a year out of training to do a role I feel so passionate about, and I’ll definitely be updating on what we get done as the year progresses 😀

My name is Taiwo and I am a Clinical Teaching Fellow

As promised, an update on my post F2 job:

I am now officially a week into my new role as a Clinical Teaching Fellow, and what a miracle job offer it was. You see, back in April, I was all set to accept a GP training job, but the Trust I’d done my F1 jobs in got in contact with me, and offered me this new role.

First, a bit of background information about the offer. Since last June, after the Black Lives Matter protests, speaking about my experiences as a black junior doctor, and being on BBC News talking about racism within the NHS, I started working informally with the Improvement Team at the hospital, helping them to create resources to educate staff and managers more about these issues.

This continued when I moved on to a new Trust for F2, even though I wasn’t technically employed by the hospital anymore, so I plucked up the courage to ask them for a formal paid role after F2, for me to be able to do even more for them.

It was a nerve-wracking process with a lot of back and forth and meetings with managers, the medical school leads, and even the Chief Executive, which was very intimidating at first but I held my ground…

They initially told me that there wasn’t enough funding for the role, which was why I applied for GP training and was all set to do that instead, until they got back to me a week before I was to confirm my GP offer, letting me know they’d found the money in the end. Like I said, a miracle job offer!

So my role is a brand new one and very exciting- I split my time between clinical work on AMU, teaching first and second year medical students, and working with the Improvement Team to create resources and projects around equality, diversity and inclusion (my focus will be on racism and microaggressions), really cool!

I’m so so excited for the year ahead and looking forward to hopefully getting involved in some research around health inequalities, as well as getting more time to relax because yay for no oncalls or nights or out of hours shifts for the next year 😄

On a more poignant note, a recent sudden bereavement has had me thinking a lot about the brevity of life, and how we shouldn’t take it for granted. Make sure you’re telling your loved ones how much you care about them, and what they mean to you as much as you can- you never know what tomorrow will bring.