Message to all Primary and Secondary Care Appraisers, from RCGP Scotland Cross-College Interface Group
As part of a cross-college initiative to improve working across the interfaces of care, a Reflective Template for Work Shadowing has been developed and is now available on the Medical Appraisal Scotland website. We would appreciate your support on rising awareness of this template and also in discussing work shadowing with your appraisees.
Inter-professional work shadowing is increasingly recognised as an excellent opportunity to enhance interface working by improving communication, relationships and understanding of each other’s roles. It also enables wider system improvements around interface issues such as referrals, discharge planning, prescribing and clinical decision support through the opportunity for two-way learning. Currently work shadowing occurs in a very "ad hoc" way across Board areas, but the feedback from GPs and consultants who participate is overwhelmingly positive, and so we were keen to develop ways that work shadowing could be formally recognised as a Quality Improvement Activity (QIA) as part of a doctor’s annual appraisal.
To this end, we have developed a reflective template (attached below - and also available on the Reflective Questionnaire Templates section) which has been approved by NES and is hosted on the Medical Appraisal Scotland website. This supports work shadowing as an accredited appraisal activity, under the "working with colleagues" section (Domain 3), an area that is traditionally difficult to collect evidence for (other than through MSF). Not only is this a hugely useful activity for the individual doctors who participate, it also has the potential for wider impact if the experiences and learning are then shared within GP practices and speciality departments. If every consultant and GP chose a half-day work shadowing as an annual appraisal activity and then committed to wider sharing within their own teams, you can see how quickly the knowledge of local systems and pathways could be improved, as well as re-establishing relationships across the primary-secondary care interface.
Work shadowing can of course be arranged directly between clinicians. RCGP Scotland, funded by the Scottish Government, is also working within every Board area to support the establishment of dedicated Interface Groups (a link to this work can be found on our website), and it is our intention that in the longer term, this work could also be promoted and administered through these groups.
We would be grateful if you would consider cascading this information through your local networks.
On behalf of the RCGP Scotland Cross-College Interface Group (with representatives from The Royal College of General Practitioners (Scotland), The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow, The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, The Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh, The Faculty of Occupational Medicine, The Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh, The Royal College of Psychiatrists, The Royal College of Pathologists, The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, the Royal College of Radiologists)
Working With Colleagues (Work Shadowing)
Inter-professional work shadowing is increasingly being recognised as an excellent opportunity to improve working across the interfaces of care by improving relationships, communication and understanding of each other’s roles and processes. This template is designed to support the reflective learning associated with planning and writing up this quality improvement activity.
Date updated: 03/05/2021
Size: 385965 - KB
Type: rtf
This page was last updated on: 03/05/2021
Posted: 23/01/2019
