Select one or more of the activities below to develop your teaching clinical skills.

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Activity 1

The next time you are in your normal working environment take a moment to consider the teaching and learning opportunities.

• Consider the resources – the room(s), the staff, the patients, their carers, the patients’ data. How can you improve on the way you incorporate them into your teaching? Write down an action plan as to how you will achieve these goals.
• Think about the trainees and learners who visit this area. How you can improve the experience for them? Ask some of them to provide you with feedback and opinion. What are the barriers preventing you from achieving these goals?
• How do you support the learning before and after the teaching sessions? Review the websites, textbooks and other resources (e.g. journals) you could use to improve this support. Write a bibliography and include your critique of the resources to guide the learners. Ask the learners/trainees to evaluate these resources and incorporate their feedback into the bibliography.

Activity 2

Consider your teaching of a specific clinical skill or procedure. Write out a template for:

• another teacher to teach this skill. Is there any research or texts that support your methods?
• a trainee/learner to use in a self-directed learning session
• an assessment of this skill or procedure. This could take the form of an OSCE station, a DoPS or similar. What rating scales will you use and how generalisable is your template?

Ask someone appropriate to use the template and give you feedback on its strengths and weaknesses.