Friday 15 July 2005

ANSA achieved two ‘first’s’ with the recent clinical skills training day. Obviously it was the first time we had hosted such a subject, which was fantastically evaluated and enjoyed by all our attendees. There were nine in all, I think we had hoped for more, but with work commitments and holidays we were a small and intimate group. As you can imagine, it didn’t hamper our learning with an informal environment in the clinical classroom at the Sherman Education Centre at Guy’s Hospital.

The day started with an overview of comprehensive history taking, and focussing questions with regard to patient presentation (Tony Booth, an SpR at Kings presented this). Next Dr Katie Vinen presented case studies which got us thinking about focussing on the important aspects of running a time-limited clinical consultation and where we should consider referring patients to other agencies or to our consultant colleagues. The final session was led by Dr Behzad Ansari who is an Associate Specialist at Kings. He ran a practical session which had us listening to each others heart sounds, lung auscultation, and completing fluid assessments on each other.

The day was supported by an educational grant from Roche Products Ltd, and Jenny Kent joined us for the day to represent Roche. She also made the perfect patient…..when we needed someone for demonstration – many thanks to her for being a great sport, and providing a tasty lunch!

The second ‘first’ for ANSA, was that the day provided practice assessment documents to take back to our clinical areas and build on the skills that were introduced to us during the day. Based on the evaluation of the day, Pat Sirrett will be leading the 2nd clinical assessment skills day in the Midlands area, with a provisional date of Jan 2006.

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