Clinical teaching, what are your plans?

[TallulahMazda]

Morning all.
Just wondering how other Universities are tacking clinical teaching right now and going forward. We use patients a lot pre and post registration across a suite of healthcare programmes. With all the changes re covid. Just wonderig what your institutions plans are.... we don't seem to have any concrete plans at present

Same with my HEI - I think someone somewhere is working on this but no news as yet. Trying to undertake clinical skills teaching in a socially distant way with an ever decreasing academic workforce (a significant proportion who would be vulnerable themselves) is going to take some planning

Have you any plans re PPE use etc? Do you use patient participation for sessions? This is a logistical mess.

We sometimes use service users but I guess not for the foreseeable! In terms of PPE we were pressured to give away our stocks at the beginning of lockdown to local Trusts and volunteers. There's a six week lead in required to order PPE and we've not risk assessed what's required yet. Apparently Occ Health will triage staffs ability to be undertaking face to face teaching but no news around criteria as yet . Someone recently called it a dystopian nightmare and though not keen on hyperbole I'm inclined to agree

Agree!

No idea. Dentistry is a mess so how we’ll teach it is a big question!

Been told that we can’t expect to be socially distant when teaching clinical skills. To wear PPE and get on with it. In smaller groups of students than usual so doubling the teaching time as will have to teach every session twice. To try and keep the session as short and succinct as possible.

We are looking at online content too. Quite how we teach some elements of clinical skills online I just don't know. Any words of wisdom gratefully received!

I think PPE for the students is fine... but what about the patients who usually have severe chronic illnesses and are therefore vulnerable? I don't think it is ethical currently to ask them to come up to be examined and put themselves at risk without benefit to themselves.