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:

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.