Minutes of Meeting
Trainee Advisory Committee, Oxford Deanery
Rosemary Rue Building, Oxford PGDME
4th March 2011, 14.30 – 17.00
Attendance:Carl Morris (Anaesthetics, Chair), Gael MacLean (Surgery, Deputy Chair), Andrew Ho (Paediatrics, Secretary), Alexander Finlayson (Academic), Tahreema Matin (Academic), Anwar Rashid (Anaesthetics), Mairead Hayes (Dental), Dimitri Kontogeorgis (Emergency Medicine), Amar Latif (Foundation), Shamila Wanninayake (GP), Peter Burbidge (Medicine), Abigail Broderick (O+G), M. Abu-Bakra (Ophthalmology, on behalf of Emily Fletcher), Anna Eccles (Pathology), Rosamund Southgate (Public Health), Sucharita Yarlgadda (Public Health), Anna Sharman (Radiology), Jonathan Stedman (Radiology), Bettina Lieske (Surgery), Peter Lees (SHA), Michael Bannon (Deanery)
Apologies:Robert Purbrick (Ophthalmology), Emily Fletcher (Ophthalmology), Emma Fitzsimons (Paediatrics)
Chaired by Dr Carl Morris (CM, Anaesthetics)
1. Last meeting, membership and Terms of Reference
Minutes from last meeting agreed by those present.
We are still missing second representatives from GP, Emergency Medicine, Pathology and O+G. Kizzy Kukreja is apparently no longer a Dental trainee. Elections are currently ongoing for GP and O+G. The current representatives in Emergency Medicine, Pathology and Dental are to seek replacements.
The amendments to the Terms of Reference are to be sent forward to the Deanery by Andrew Ho (Paediatrics, AH) for ratification (AH to send revised ToR to Deanery). Election methods have been recived from 6 specialties (Remaining specialties please to email AH with summary of election methods).
2. Contacting trainees
This is still problematic with no obvious solutions. Since the last meeting, CM has been contacted by the Deanery asking if we have access to all trainees. Apparently they have looked into the possibility of allocating all trainees an NHS.net email address to follow them around different trusts as a unified way of contacting everyone, but this is not possible.
Alexander Finlayson (AF, Academic) notes that for the deanery to be able to contact the trainees is specifically mentioned in the White Paper.
Eportfolio is a possible means to contact all trainees, but its use is not universal across grades and specialties.
The main difficulties are in the surgical and medical subspecialties, and confidentiality concerns are stopping us from bringing together our own list.
The best source we currently have is Intrepid via the deanery. It would seem the best way to put together a more thorough list is for someone at the Deanery to be allocated to go to all the TPDs and collate a contact list.
We raised these issues with Mr Peter Lees later on in this meeting.
3. Website update (Jonathan Stedman, JS, Radiology)
More material now appearing and several specialties have basic material uploaded. The gaps left now include the medical and surgical subspecialties, who are a more disparate community and need individual contacts. Peter Burbridge (PB, Medicine) and Bettina Lieske (BL, Surgery) are making efforts to resolve this.
CM asked about how many people are accessing the website. JS does not have this information to hand, but will try to source. (JS to source data from Deanery)
JS then asked us to try to disseminate information about the trainee area of the Deanery website to our specialty trainees (All to promote website at )
4. Travel Expenses
The major problem at this stage seems to be the John Radcliffe, which is not offering rooms to trainees working non-resident on call rotas. When they need a room, they are asked to pay themselves. This is difficult for trainees who do not live in Oxford who are unable to make the 30 minutes to site requirement. They have not had success claiming back the costs for this from the Deanery. This has mainly been a problem for Ophthalmology and Radiology trainees. The Surgeons are also non-resident on call, but they still have access to an on-call room. Amar Latif (AL, Foundation), is due to soon be attending a meeting with JRH management and will raise this issue. (AL is to find who the best person to contact is and then the committee will draft a letter)
Anaesthetics have previously had a problem with claiming travel expenses as it was thought that the costs came out of anaesthetic funds and so the consultants were reluctant to sign claim forms. This has since been resolved.
5. Peter Lees- SHA Medical Director and Director of Leadership (PL, SHA)
Introductions were made by CM.
Most people in the room were found to have attended the Lead or be Led course. There were some concerns expressed by Shamila Wanninayake (SW, GP) that the GP trainees were being informed that only two places were available to GP trainees annually. PL clarified this was not the case and there are no limitations of numbers for specialties. No other trainees have had similar difficulties. PL then encouraged us to disseminate information about these courses again to our trainees in each specialty. The NHS South Central Group are also keen to develop new courses, and they can be approached with ideas.
PL also offered to help arrange a session with a Negotiation Skills trainer for the committee.
AF then spoke about his attempts to create more leadership opportunities within the region along the lines of the ‘Prepare to Lead’ programme in London. He has found others trying to do similar things in the region and wonders if we might be able to organise ‘Leadership Days’ in the region to bring all together. PL also offers that should any of us want to spend time or forge links with management trainees, he is happy to offer introductions to Medical Directors or Chief Executives of trusts.
BL noted that all the NHS South Central Leadership Fellow jobs seemed to be linked to Wessex and none were based around Oxford. PL was not aware of this and will check, as it is not intended to be arranged like this.
GM raised the issue of difficulty in contacting trainees. It seems PL was unaware of this problem and will discuss with the appropriate bodies. The NHS.net email address idea was again raised and PL will discuss with DB. PL also asked how Wessex deals with this problem- no-one in the committee knows the answer to this.
6. Dr Michael Bannon, Postgraduate Dean (MB, Deanery)
The Deanery is to arrange a prizes day for Trainee Innovation and Leadership in the NHS. This is intended to reward and encourage trainees. It is to be advertised on the website.
Implications of the white paper include the reorganisation of Deaneries into multidisciplinary skills networks. There is a lot of uncertainty around this currently and money is very tight. It is felt that Deaneries are very isolated and need to be tied further into multi-disciplinary networks. It is unclear who will lead these organisations. Public Health already run a lot of multiprofessionals training. MB suggested that training is likely to be diversified to topics such as Financial Responsibility, Human Factors and Public Health, which affect multiple disciplines.
Maj Abu-Bakra (MA, Ophthalmology) then asked about possible conflicts of interest in this and also ongoing relevance of the gold guide. MB replied that governance structures are yet to be formulated, and that the gold guides will still be binding.
Also from the white paper, SHAs are to abolished by April 2012, with shadow networks up and running by this Autumn. There is still a lot of uncertainty around this and Trusts are discussing arrangements amongst themselves.
AF asked MB to feed back to the Deanery that despite trainees mainly contacting the Deanery with complaints and problems, we are actually very appreciative of their work.
7. Rotas
AL has noted there is no longer a requirement for trusts to perform hours monitoring. Should there be concerns about total hours worked, they need to be raised through the PMETB/GMC training survey, where they will be raised as red flags. As trainees, we will have to take more responsibility in these matters from hereon in.
8. Last HoS meeting
CM attended the last Hos Meeting in February.
Issues raised included
- Following discussion, it was felt a Deanery level Governance group was not needed for HoS TPD support.
- There have been recruitment problems in several specialties, including Psychiatry, Emergency Medicine and Paediatrics.
- At Academic ARCPs, representatives are needed for both clinical and academic work. Praise has been received for the development of a standalone Academic Eportfolio system
- Also for Academic trainees, it was noted that final CCT date is flexbile, as even if they do not complete the same clinical time as other specialty trainees, CCT is competency based.
- LAT posts unlikely to become NTNs
- A request for access to all trainee’s E-portfolios by one trust was rejected.
CM also attended the Oxford Educator’s Day, which included:
- Discussion about reductions in the numbers of trainees
- A talk from Dr Lachmann about systems and human factors in medicine
- Workshops on the implications of the white papers
8. AoB
Rosamund Southgate (RS, Public Health) again reminded the committee about the need for trainee representation on IDT panels. Vicky Beal () is our contact for people interested.
Sucharita Yarlgadda informed us that there is to be a Medical Education Fellow in the Deanery, with the details going to the Deanery Executive and a target start date for April.
A reminder about the Training the Trainers course was offered.
CM tells us that following on from the Paediatric model, the Anaesthetic trainees are now running monthly training.
CM should obtain CCT in the summer and will be standing down. It was decided that elections will take place 1 month before the June meeting
CM reports a Quality Management Committee is to be formed by the Deanery. The chair of the TAC is to be on this as trainee representative. His successor will take on this role.
9. Date of Next Meetings
3rd June at 1430. Venue: Rosemary Rue Building Teaching rooms.
Subsequent meetings are scheduled for September 30th and December 2nd 2011.
Next Heads of School meetings are arranged for 27th April,16th June and 9th August.
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