Mind the Bleep's
Applicants must submit an educational project proposal. Details & Criteria below.
Open: 1st August 2023 to 31st October 2023
Eligibility: Open to all junior doctors & final year medical students
Awards: One winner & 2 Highly Commended by 30th November 2023
Project Proposal
Mind the Bleep is all about making the lives of medical students & junior doctors better by the provision of free medical education. We’re looking for project proposals that support our ethos.
Applicants should submit an educational project proposal that’s aimed at any grade of junior doctor and/or final year medical students.
Winners will be supported in delivering their project in any format including but not limited to webinars, eLearning course, online resources, articles, tutorials or in-person courses. If certain criteria are needed for future applications or portfolios, we will work with them to maximise this. Unfortunately, as a free platform, we won’t be able financially support projects.
1
Will your project benefit the lives of doctors or medical students?
2
Can your project be realistically implemented with support from the team?
3
Do you bring what's needed to build this project?
Contact us if you have any questions!
Referral Cheat Sheet - provides junior doctors key information required to make referrals
Finance Course - provides an eLearning course on basic financial principles
Radiology Course - comprehensive tutorials on interpreting radiological imaging
FY1 Survival Guide - a booklet covering the top things all those starting FY1 must know
Others examples include our PSA Course, SFP content & everything else on the site!
Several members of the team from different specialties & backgrounds will review & score each application based on the three criteria above. They will not know the names or details of applicants.
The winners & runner ups will receive a letter confirming that they have won an award open to all junior doctors & final year medical students.
Additionally we hope by implementing the project, you will be able to develop skills and score points in teaching, QI, leadership & presentations but this will depend on the scope of your project and your portfolio needs.
Of course. There is an extra box at the bottom of the form which allows you to list others in your team. We'd recommend listing the skills & experiences of the whole team in the box asking this.
Contact us on [email protected]
What is the aim of the project?
Traditionally, final year medical students are expected to learn how to be an effective foundation doctor through shadowing. While this undeniably valuable, students still report feeling unprepared for foundation practice. This project aims to increase preparedness and teach students key skills required for foundation using an innovative escape room simulation.
How would you develop & implement it?
A webinar will be sent to final year medical students, covering important foundation skills, such as ward rounds and documentation, prescribing, prioritisation and acute patient management. They will later participate in the escape room simulation in groups of 5. The simulated acute patient scenario will require students to practice multiple skills. Participants will be ‘locked’ in a room to solve a series of puzzles and padlocks related to the medical scenario as they progress through their assessment and management and eventually ‘escape’. The simulation will be debriefed and cover key concepts such as teamwork, communication, work pressure and technical skills.
How would you assess the benefit and/or improve the quality of your project?
Students will be asked to complete pre- and post-session feedback questionnaires to evaluate their preparedness for FY1 and confidence in managing an acutely unwell patient, on a scale of 1-10. The change in these levels will allow evaluation of its impact. Qualitative questions will ask participants to feedback on the skills they developed, what they liked about the session and what they felt could be improved. Comments from the debrief will also be noted and used for quality improvement. A pre- and post-session single-best answer (SBA) assessment may also be used as an objective measure of learning.
What skills and/or experience do you possess to help you develop it?
I am currently working as an Education Fellow and have just completed my PGCert in Medical Education. I have piloted this escape room with a small group of students, and it has received excellent feedback, including on its enjoyability and on the development of teamwork and clinical reasoning skills. I have extensive experience of teaching at all stages of medical training, including simulation and debriefing. I have organised and developed a variety of courses, with very positive feedback. I have a keen interest in supporting the transition from medical school to foundation and I believe innovation is key.
What support would you need from the Mind the Bleep team to help implement your project?
I would require support in developing and promoting the course, providing the tutorials on your platform, and finding a location to run the escape room.
What is the aim of the project?
Thursday Fifteen is a teaching platform that was created last year. Our aim was to deliver high yield teaching sessions to medical students and demonstrate how our sessions and material can be an excellent resource to supplement students’ revision and improve their confidence in core medical topics.
How would you develop & implement it? ‘Thursday Fifteen’ was created as a framework to provide high quality interactive virtual sessions each week for medical students revising for their exams. Weekly 45-minute sessions were held virtually over the course of 5 months and was advertised by contacting medical school societies and on Facebook. Each session was led by Foundation Doctors and consisted of a 15-question mock exam followed by explanations of the answers. Each session covered a whole specialty such as cardiology or respiratory. In addition, we are now active on Facebook and Instagram where we post exam tips, OSCE stations and MCQs to help with finals.
How would you assess the benefit and/or improve the quality of your project?
A cross-sectional observational analysis was obtained from feedback forms that participants filled out after each session. This allowed us to collect baseline characteristics from participants the first time they joined us and monitor when new attendees joined. Data was collected from 136 students at 11 universities. Results showed 83.9% of students preferred a virtual format as opposed to in-person, with 87.8% stating that MCQs were a more useful format compared to lectures. Overall, we found that there was a significant improvement in confidence scores (out of 10) of the taught topic before and after the session (5.77 vs 7.96, p<0.001).
What skills and/or experience do you possess to help you develop it?
Thursday Fifteen was set up by 3 Foundation doctors with a keen interest in medical education who graduated in the midst of the pandemic and distance learning and found the benefit of online teaching methods. We realised we all used various techniques of active recall as a core learning method and wanted to utilise this to ensure students could retain maximum information in short digestible sessions. We incorporated key organisational, marketing and leadership skills we developed by being part of university and foundation societies such as BMA and surgical society, enabling us to to set up this nationwide teaching platform.
What support would you need from the Mind the Bleep team to help implement your project?
We are proud of the reach that we’ve had so far and pleased to now be funded by Health Education England. Collaborating with Mind the Bleep would give us a wider reach and help innovate new projects such as implementing bigger revision sessions and launching an app or online platform.
What is the aim of the project?
Medical schools under-prepare students for the practicality of working out-of-hours shifts as a doctor. Bleep101 primarily involves simulated on-call teaching, which aims to increase preparedness and confidence among final year medical students for their first ward cover shifts as F1s.
How would you develop & implement it?
We have created 20 on-call scenarios, divided into medical, surgical, prescribing, communication and distractor tasks. There are 3 ready-made circuits for teaching sessions lasting between 1.5-2hours. They include all resources: facilitator guides (including a training video), patient notes, drugs charts, feedback forms and circuit maps, which can be printed or used electronically. The sessions would mandate 1-2 final year students and 1-2 facilitators (F1+) signing up. In addition, at least 1 bleep would be required for the students to carry, and a telephone/room from which the facilitators can call/bleep the students.
How would you assess the benefit and/or improve the quality of your project?
The session can be evaluated through standardised anonymised pre- and post-session paperless surveys. These would explore comparison of confidence in various domains, such as completing out-of-hours shifts, operating a bleep, task prioritisation, gathering and providing information, and handover. Furthermore, the survey would provide feedback for the specific delivery of their session and for the facilitator to allow for praise and areas for improvement.
What skills and/or experience do you possess to help you develop it?
I have experienced co-leading Bleep101 over the last year at my local hospital in Bristol, which has allowed me to co-ordinate and teach medical students in addition to managing my time effectively whilst on a full-time SHO rota. For four years I formally taught, gathered feedback and was appointed peer tutor lead of clinical skills in London, where I led and worked with 200+ peer tutors and 20+ clinicians to deliver excellent clinical skills teaching to Y1-3 students. My experiences have also enabled me to publish and share my experiences in the renowned Clinical Teacher journal.
What support would you need from the Mind the Bleep team to help implement your project?
Bleep101 is a free and accessible online resource that enables educators to easily set up simulated on-call teaching. In partnership with yourselves, we would love to share and expand our simulated on-call teaching programme and therefore support educational fellows in setting it up at their local hospitals across the country.
What is the aim of the project?
Teaching junior doctors and medical students about minor trauma, which is not commonly covered in medical school but frequently encountered in ED and GP rotations. Aim - to improve confidence in independently assessing wounds and managing extremity lacerations, ocular injuries and burns (superficial/partial thickness), and recognising when to refer to specialist.
How would you develop & implement it?
The principles of management for the aforementioned topics can be delivered as either a series of webinars lasting 20-30 minutes per topic or together as a 2 hour webinar. These would be delivered by experienced ED registrars/consultants and emergency nurse practitioners.
In addition to webinar(s), a summary sheet can be created for each topic to remind learners of the salient management steps for these injuries.
How would you assess the benefit and/or improve the quality of your project?
Benefit can be measured by undertaking a survey assessing learner's confidence in managing the injuries. A comparison can be made between the average group confidence prior to attending the teaching and after attending the teaching. Confidence can be measured using a 5-point Likert scale, from not at all confident to very confident.
What skills and/or experience do you possess to help you develop it?
I have collected the survey to understand the confidence levels (in managing minor trauma) of FY1/FY2 doctors at my local hospital, which has emphasised the relevance of this teaching proposal.
I have experience in organising a national peer-teaching series for medical students, on case-based OSCE examinations and A-E assessment, for the British International Doctors Association. This has familiarised me with the process of creating a successful teaching programme, from approaching speakers for sessions, organising weekly webinars on Zoom, advertising sessions on social media, and collecting feedback using Survey Monkey and evaluating participant feedback to continuously improve future sessions.
What support would you need from the Mind the Bleep team to help implement your project?
I hope to use your online platform to deliver the webinars nationally to all medical students and junior doctors. The team can support me in contacting experienced speakers. Moreover, I would be able to collect the pre-webinar survey assessing confidence levels in a larger group of junior doctors.
What is the aim of the project?
Ultrasound-guided cannulation is no longer just for Anaesthetists (recently added to the EM and AM curriculums).
Unfortunately, accreditation is otherwise only possible via paid courses (you even have to pay to supervise).
Everyone can and should learn this skill. I'd like 80% of all FYs & PAs competent by 2026.
How would you develop & implement it?
Despite many being competent to train, and a strong desire from all to learn, uptake is limited by the lack of an official framework. I want to develop my current course into a free, accredited pathway that others can use to deliver training.
I need help taking this proven concept and:
How would you assess the benefit and/or improve the quality of your project?
There are multiple ways to measure benefit and quality:
What skills and/or experience do you possess to help you develop it?
I'm an Anaesthetic trainee and have been delivering this training for 3+ years. This involved recording videos, leading a team of several juniors and collaborating with individuals outside of my trust.
We have progressed from informal tutorials to an online lecture, procedural workshop template and follow-up supervised practice. I've recruited several juniors to help teach 200+ including students, doctors and nurses, across multiple hospitals. Now we are focussing on collaborating with other trainers across KSS, as well as the FPA.
What support would you need from the Mind the Bleep team to help implement your project?
Ideas, support, contacts and your experience in running and organising large projects. I strongly believe in collaboration. As mentioned I am also working with:
What is the aim of the project?
Medical schools are very poor at preparing students for out-of-hours decision-making. Best Evidence For Foundation Years is a web-based resource which will aim to fundamentally improve the decision-making of newly qualified doctors in the out-of-hours setting, by using the approach stipulated by Evidence-Based Medicine to answer commonly encountered clinical questions from this element of practice. This will allow trainees to have more confidence in their decisions, and reduce patient harm.
How would you develop & implement it?
At present, the plan is to regularly post blogs in the format of similar FOAMEd resources such as the articles of Mind The Bleep. I have established a series of common clinical scenarios that I wish to tackle first, as well as lifestyle elements of F1 (e.g. foundation job choice, managing sleep, commuting etc). I will also work with foundation doctors at my trust to refine and inform further useful content.
Following the publication of content in this initial "core syllabus", the best approach would be to create a living database of the most up-to-date research with categorisation into medical specialties, surgical specialties etc., as well as producing sections on evidence-based medicine skillsets/ literacy and metacognitive elements of clinical decision making (bias and noise). As well as online content, I think podcasts and YouTube/ social media videos would also be very helpful
There is also the potential to expand this to higher specialty trainees through my links with the local NIHR Allied Research Collaboration; I have already had a discussion about expansion to GPST.
How would you assess the benefit and/or improve the quality of your project?
Website and resource engagement can be automatically recorded via usual online metrics (clicks, visits, email subscribers etc.) on the platform that is currently in use (Ghost.org).
Feedback can be informally assessed through comments on the website, as well as by working with those at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and the local NIHR group to inform the best possible approach to the interface.
I also plan to implement this during my work as a tutor at local universities to gain honest feedback from end users directly.
What skills and/or experience do you possess to help you develop it?
I am a current associate lecturer in Evidence-Based Medicine at local medical schools and have attended a short course on teaching this content at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University. I am also due to undertake an MSc in Epidemiology, so have the knowledge and skillset to quality-check the content.
I am currently leading a scoping review on the topic of Out Of Hours teaching in undergraduate curricula, so have a strong understanding of learner needs in this domain. I am also doing a postgraduate certificate in clinical education, during which I have done work on effective modes of online education.
What support would you need from the Mind the Bleep team to help implement your project?
I currently have the support of the local NIHR Allied Research Collaboration, and links with local medical schools to be able to implement it on a local level. I need the expertise of Mind The Bleep to help with the dissemination of the project via social media, as well as the team's expertise in website coding, streaming, and social media to have elements beyond simple blog posts.
Mind the Bleep’s Award in Medical Education is open to all final year medical students & junior doctors. You can submit your application until the end of the last day of the application window. For more details on what kinds of projects we’re looking for & how they will be judged please read the above materials. Contact us if you have any questions!
