Training Medical Education Trainers – Day 1

As an IFMSA-Québec delegate, I am presently attending the TMET workshop at the pre-AM 2016 in Mexico. Other TMET trainers and I thought that we should share to all SCOMEdians the knowledge we acquired through Alexander and Stintje, our two trainers for the next three days.

We first began by doing some energizers in order to get to know each other (all 8 of us!). Stintje then gave a training session about curriculum design which helped us understand how medical schools can build and improve their curriculum, as well as how we medical students can harness those same concepts to create training sessions. We first talked about the Knowle’s 4 Principles of Andragogy, which stipulates that involved adult learners (in their planning and evaluation of instruction), focus on adult learners’ experience, its relevance and impact on learners’ lives and a problem-centered approach were the basis of effective adult learning. In order to create curriculums to teach those adult learners, there exists a 6-step approch to curriculum development that streamlines the process :

1. Problem identification and general needs assessment + needs of stakeholders
2. Needs assessment for targeted learners
3. Goals and objective
4. Educational strategy
5. Implementation
6. Assessment or evaluation

In the afternoon, Alexander gave us workshops on advocacy as well as negotiation and fundraising. Advocacy is useful as SCOME members in order to advocate for better medical education in our own faculties. The process can be summarized in five simple steps :

1. Identify
2. Research
3. Plan with the help of SMART Objectives = Specific – Measurable – Achievable – Realistic – Time-bound
4. Act
5. Evaluate Indicators

Those advocacy skills were put to use when we created on our advocacy campaign – first example, my team decide that we wanted more students in our local SCOME. For its part, fundraising is the “raising of assets and resources from various sources”. The most important things are to 1. Assess your strengths and weaknesses, 2. Review current budget, 3. Set goals and 4. Create a calendar. In order to put in practice what we had just learned about negotiation (and because it is not a skill acquired overnight!), the TMET became a real “Shark Tank” : five of us were put in the role of GA organizer trying to get as much money/assets from entrepreneurs and officials as possible! Those sometimes put us in difficult situations but it was great practice before putting those skills to work in real-life SCOME and taught me that we should always be specific when asking something from a donor as well as use real-life stories in order to create an emotional bond with the donor.

So many things to be learned and it’s only Day 1! Stay tuned for more details about the concepts learned in my sessions tomorrow : who knows, maybe you’ll learn something too!