The power of video for GP trainer re-accreditation

Health Education England North West

Health Edu­ca­tion Eng­land North West (HEE NW) have been using iConnect’s video cap­ture app and online feed­back plat­form since 2017 to sup­port GP train­ing and specif­i­cal­ly train­er re-accred­i­ta­tion. In that time, train­ers in the North West have record­ed and shared over 1,500 videos via iCon­nect for their re-accreditation.

HEE NW’s pri­or­i­ty is ‘to ensure that their trainees are con­fi­dent in pro­vid­ing high-qual­i­ty patient care, sup­port­ed by excel­lent train­ers and under­pinned by the GMC’s stan­dards for med­ical edu­ca­tion and training.’

The challenge

To achieve the above, they feel it’s impor­tant to observe how train­ers deliv­er teach­ing and learn­ing with­in their prac­tices. “We think watch­ing them actu­al­ly do a learn­ing event, usu­al­ly a case based dis­cus­sion is a very good way of iden­ti­fy­ing those train­ers that need extra sup­port in that area,” explains Ali­son Cald­well, Asso­ciate GP Dean for HEE NW.

The chal­lenge they faced was that hun­dreds of train­ers with­in the North West were using mem­o­ry sticks to share their videos. All 9 Asso­ciate Deans had a num­ber of mem­o­ry sticks in their pos­ses­sion at any one time, which posed a secu­ri­ty risk.

“Before iCon­nect, we were using mem­o­ry sticks to trans­fer and share infor­ma­tion which was often time-con­sum­ing along with the risk of this infor­ma­tion being lost in the post, deliv­ered incor­rect­ly and/or stolen,” explains Mei Lee, GP Pro­gramme Administrator.

The solution

iConnect’s unique record­ing sys­tem has meant train­ers can now down­load the app onto any smart­phone or tablet to quick­ly and secure­ly record videos and then share them dig­i­tal­ly at the click of a button.

Ali­son explains, “All of our train­ers are re-accred­it­ed every three years and we ask them to pro­vide a video of learn­ing with some reflec­tion. The Asso­ciate Dean team watch those videos pri­or to the re-accred­i­ta­tion pan­el. We also have a num­ber of mas­ter­class­es run­ning across HEE NW which are accred­it­ed to a local uni­ver­si­ty, they require some video of either a learn­ing event or a coach­ing event, so it’s used for that. Also, our basic train­ers’ course requires a sub­mis­sion of a teach­ing event and a patient con­sul­ta­tion so we can access that poten­tial train­er’s con­sul­ta­tion skills in advance of them com­ing on the course.”

Not only has the iCon­nect app made video record­ing more sim­ple and acces­si­ble, but the online video plat­form has also saved time and effort.

“My job takes me away quite a lot and I’m nev­er on one site for very long, so I like the fact that I can log in to iCon­nect from home, from a hotel if I’m away on a course or from the office, and watch a video because it’s there on the iCon­nect plat­form. It’s def­i­nite­ly saved me time and def­i­nite­ly saved that incon­ve­nience of hav­ing to come and col­lect a mem­o­ry stick so that I can do my job. It’s also far more secure. The qual­i­ty of the record­ings is also supe­ri­or to a mem­o­ry stick.

I’d def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend iCon­nect to oth­ers to use because it’s such an easy method of upload­ing as many videos as often as you like, and pro­vides the abil­i­ty to feed­back very quick­ly to the learn­er. It’s also very user-friend­ly, all the GPs have found it easy to use.”

“It’s a much more improved, and safer way to trans­fer and share infor­ma­tion which gives both the train­er and HEE NW staff peace of mind,” says Mei. “The sup­port we’ve received from iCon­nect has been real­ly effi­cient, help­ful and very much appreciated.”

The future

Ali­son and her team plan to fur­ther utilise iConnect’s analy­sis tools to cap­ture data and make the feed­back process­es simpler. 

“We’re look­ing for­ward to using iConnect’s Forms fea­ture to replace our re-accred­i­ta­tion doc­u­ment, which is a bit like an appraisal doc­u­ment,” describes Ali­son. “We hope to make the ques­tions from the doc­u­ment into a form and then the train­ers will use the com­men­tary fea­ture to reflect on their videos. At the moment train­ers have to do a writ­ten time­line of the video, so this will save a lot of time and sim­pli­fy the process.”

HEE NW’s invest­ment in iCon­nect has fil­tered down to train­ing prac­tices and pro­grammes in the region who are using the sys­tem to sup­port their own trainees when record­ing patient con­sul­ta­tions. As a result, the North West is the fastest grow­ing region in the coun­try for iCon­nect usage.