e-Learning: The Clinical Supervisor's Report for the MRCGP

An Interactive e-Learning Session for Clinical Supervisors

The RCGP’s e-learning team and e-Learning for Healthcare have developed a 20-minute e-learning session for Clinical Supervisors on the Clinical Supervisor’s Report (CSR) for the MRCGP. This session can be accessed in two ways:

1. Clinical Supervisors and others with an e-GP account can access the session in the Teaching, Mentoring and Clinical Supervision section of e-GP:

>>Log in to e-GP

>>Register for an e-GP account

2. Clinical Supervisors and others who do NOT have an e-GP account can access the session here

Please note that a record of your learning activity will only automatically record in your e-GP learning record (and e-Portfolio log for Trainees) if you access the session via your e-GP log in (option 1).

Background to the Clinical Supervisors Report e-learning session

Following feedback from educators in both primary and secondary care, the RCGP recently redesigned its Clinical Supervisor’s Report in both content and form. Pilots of the Report confirmed high acceptability and feasibility prior to its adoption. This thought provoking e-learning session relates to the use of that new Supervisor’s Report.

The new Report has been structured to make it intuitive in two specific ways. Firstly, the rating scale has been adapted, using comparisons with doctors at the same stage of training. Secondly, the 12 areas of competence in the RCGP framework have been clustered using the RDMp model, which is a generic model of medical competence that can be applied across all specialties*. The acronym is expanded as follows:

• Relationship involves all aspects of how doctors relate whether patients or colleagues/staff

• Diagnostics involves all aspects of gathering & managing information in search of optimal decision-making whether for patients, colleagues/staff or oneself

• Management involves skills related to the wider handling of one’s professional responsibilities to patients, colleagues/staff and oneself

• Professionalism underpins these three core activities and centres on respect: to others (relationship), to due process in gathering & analysing information (diagnostics), and to ongoing responsibilities (management)

By clustering behaviours that are related to each other, the supervisor is more readily able to triangulate information and search for confirmation of competence or for evidence of underperformance in other related areas. For example, the ‘Relationship’ cluster suggests that if the trainee has difficulty with the consultation, we might look to see whether team working skills are satisfactory. We believe that the global assessment that is also enhanced through this intuitive route.

Although the formative potential of the report is important, the intention of these changes is also to allow early recognition of difficulties to be made with greater confidence, allowing appropriate support to be offered in a timely fashion.

These points are demonstrated by this e-learning session, which has been developed in partnership with secondary care educators to train supervisors in the use of the report. The e-learning session is easy to use and enables Supervisors to gain simple familiarity with the new structure or to explore worked examples in more depth. More importantly, it is a thought-provoking resource that helps Supervisors to understand the areas of competence and to give specific evidence based feedback that helps trainees change behaviour and improve performance.

Those who choose to use the e- learning session fully find themselves reflecting on how best to offer effective evidence-based feedback. The target audience spans both secondary and primary care supervisors, but as half of GP clinical supervision occurs within secondary care, that is where the examples are set. The session can be completed in as little as twenty minutes and revisited as required. It provides an opportunity for professional development of the educator, and could form part of the evidence of such to the GMC. Equally appropriate to primary and secondary care supervisors, it provides an opportunity for joint training and even fits in with faculty development activity across specialties.

The session has proved straightforward to use, popular with consultants and effective both in private study and especially when discussed jointly by primary and secondary care educators. We greatly encourage you to try out the facility yourselves and hope that you will enjoy the experience.

Nicki Williams and Amar Rughani, Dec 2010

* Quality in Primary Care 2009; 17(1):37-47. A unifying theory of clinical practice: Relationship, Diagnostics, Management and professionalism (RDM-p). Norfolk T, Siriwardena AN.