If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, try, and TRY again…

A haiku:

Finally driving,

Yes, I’ve passed my practical!

Such a relief – YAY.

(I did say I wanted to be driving by Christmas… just didn’t think it would take two years to get here! I guess I have COVID lockdowns, job changes, moving cities, changing instructors, hectic rotas, and ofcourse my annoying exam nerves to thank for that… but at long last, IT IS DONE).

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 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: