Hand-overs, especially the morning ones can be a source of energy for the fresh day starters.
Few minutes of 'Learning bites' present the perfect opportunity to get your team together, discuss the plan of the day, thank the night team for their efforts, and start the day with a little challenge to our minds. Not all of us use the same method of delivery, which makes them even more interesting for the team.
I had a chat with Dr. Francoise Sheppard, an Emergency Medicine consultant with a special interest in social media and FOAMED as an education platform.
Preparation of her learning bites happens in 2 steps:
First, she finds her inspiration listening to Podcasts that relate to her clinical encounters or case - discussions on the shop floor. Then she looks into the show notes for references (well-established sources like RCEMlearning, LITFL, EMCrit, Roadside to Resus, DFTB, St.Emlyn’s, Dr. Simon McCormick blog, etc.). She then checks for local guidance related to the topic and incorporates this into her research.
The second step is to distill all this information in the form of a clinical case-based discussion of about 10 minutes.
But, how long does it normally take to prepare them?
Francoise has her own strategy - Preparing in “little chunks”. She listens to the podcast in her car (productive use of the commuting time) which takes about 20-40 minutes. Then she re-listens them during her walks with her dog on another day and then sits on a different day to plan her 'Learning bites' combining all the resources. As you can see, many small chunks of work, mature the idea and develops the presentation.
Practical tips:
1. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for ideas, get inspiration from day-to-day activities (clinical work, Podcasts to stay up to date, Twitter feeds, etc.), and capitalize on them.
2. Keep interesting tweets saved in your account, and look into them when you want to prepare a session.
3. Enhance learning using a departmental teaching WhatsApp group to provide online links related to the topic.
