Feedback from the Trainee Steering Group Face to Face
The group met on a sunny Sunday at the Faculty’s offices, overlooking beautiful Regents Park, for a donut fuelled meeting to discuss on-going projects and plan future endeavours. For the first time, the meeting coincided with the medical students’ catch up, allowing joint learning and exchange of ideas.
Participants were treated to a fantastic development session led by the inimitable Claire Thomas, who is a master of making so called ‘soft’ skills tangible and obtainable. Following on from a previous session about project management, this instalment focussed on how to identify, categorise and manage stakeholders effectively. No easy task, but one that will be greatly aided by the understanding of the relationship between power and influence of stakeholders that Claire’s teaching afforded.
The steering group then heard from Faculty Manager Kirsten Armit, who updated everyone on the latest developments within the wider organisation. She shared the main strategic priorities, namely: developing standards for medical leadership, improving membership diversity, supporting healthcare organisations to develop medical leadership and reviewing and growing the evidence base for medical leadership.
Representatives shared reports of trainee activities from each of the eight FMLM regions. As well as a number of exciting events that have taken place or are already planned, the group discuss the upcoming regional Faculty conferences, which will aim to involve trainees closely in their organisations and provide relevant and engaging content for doctors of all levels. Simon Tallowin from the Armed Forces explained that he had completed an ‘at-a-glance’ summary of the DMS 20 report, which will see significant changes to the organisation of medical personnel in the military.
The leads of the workstreams fed back the latest projects from their various domains. The mentoring project goes from strength to strength and its success has secured a roll out to include a parallel scheme for trainees to receive support from consultants, to help them in developing their leadership skills. The Opinion Reference Group aims to do a further survey shortly of trainees and medical students, building on the popularity of their previous enquiry in to knowledge of contemporary health policy issues amongst trainees. An idea for the future is to develop regional policy evenings, focussed around stimulating debate on controversial topics relevant to medicine. Watch this space.
If you are a trainee who is interested in getting involved in the work of the FMLM, or maybe you want to apply for a position on the Trainees’ Steering Group, then please check out Project Bank for the latest vacancies and information.