DClinRes SSLC meeting 8th December 2010
Staff present: Dr Karen Knapp (Senior Programme Lead).
Students present: Rachel Harris, Beverley Soltysiak, Rhoda Allison, Tim Hollingbury, Linda Knott, Tim Ayres, Sarah Black.
Apologies: Hugh Wilkins, Dr Ian Frampton, Dr Anke Karl; Professor Eugene Mullan, Professor Dave Richards.
The students were asked how they felt the programme had run and how the content fitted their expectations to date. They were very pleased with the PSYD050, Advanced Clinical Research skills module. This had met their expectations, was well organised and they felt they had learnt a lot undertaking this module.
A general comment came through that they don’t like to be referred to as trainees and would rather be called students. They are all senior members of staff and they felt that trainee was not an appropriate term.
They like the timing of the programme and attending the University of Exeter on alternate weeks works well for them and enables them to have sufficient time to complete their SSRP research. They also feel the peer support aspect of meeting every other week is important and they have bonded well as a group and value the supportive nature of this group.
They were less pleased about the leadership module so far, which they had undertaken a 2 day introductory workshop at the time of this meeting. They felt that as a group of senior healthcare professionals they had covered a lot of old group. All of them have undertaken a degree of leadership training in the past and they do not require the basics which this introductory workshop had provided. Karen Knapp agreed to feed this back to the module leads and that we would undertake a re-work of the module to raise the level to take into account their seniority and the leadership training and practice they have done previously.
Karen Knapp raised with them the need to amend the leadership module to break it down into two halves in order to facilitate a MSc step-off point. This step-off point was required in case anyone should fail to achieve the doctoral gateway and would not be permitted to continue and for anyone who did not wish to continue to the doctoral project for any reason. They were keen to have the module split and have a MSc as a fall-back position.
They raised the need for better communication to ensure they knew what was coming when and highlighted that their diaries are booked up well in advance and as such they require the teaching dates as early as possible. Karen said she would feed this back to the team and they would aim to improve communication. Karen apologised for this and thanked them for their patience and explained that there are likely to be some teething problems in a new programme like this and encouraged them to keep feeding back to us so we can improve aspects they are unhappy with.
Karen thanked them for staying late for the SSLC meeting and no further business was raised.
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