GOSH hosts first Children’s Hospital Education Specialists Symposium

Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) was delighted to host the first ever Children’s Hospital Education Specialist Symposium (CHESS), a national, one-day forum championing paediatric education, backed by the Children’s Hospital Alliance.Education and training for healthcare professionals has remained a vital cornerstone of the NHS over its 70-year history, recognised as integral to providing excellent and safe services for patients. Through CHESS, education colleagues at GOSH invited children’s hospitals around the UK to come together to discuss and collaborate around the opportunities and challenges often faced in specialist paediatric education.

With multidisciplinary ways of working being a key focus, delegates and speakers attended from a range of disciplines including general paediatric, nursing, allied health, healthcare science, surgery, and anaesthetics.

The busy programme of talks kicked off with Camilla Kingdon, Vice President at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, who explored the importance of compassionate leadership in order to create a successful multi-professional working and training environment.

Rein Sikveland from the University of Loughborough looked at the role of communication in education; sharing examples of dialogue analysis to highlight how conversation style, rapport and negotiation play an important role in delivery and feedback.

Meanwhile Julie Combes from Health Education England explored their vision for the next 5–10 years, focusing on the need for creating flexible and adaptable opportunities for the workforce to continually deliver patient-centred care.

Parallel sessions delivered by education leads at GOSH looked at areas such as the role of technology in education. Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green, Lead Healthcare Scientist, and Dr Will Thomas, Associate Professor from Suffolk Business School, explored how gamification can be used to engage students with abstract learning concepts. Meanwhile Simon Blackburn, Interim Co-Director of Medical Education at GOSH, demonstrated how simulation and technology-enhanced learning (including virtual reality) can be utilised in education scenarios.

Concluding the day was Ross Fisher from Sheffield Children’s Hospital, who delivered a plenary on the ‘science of presenting’, sharing advice for making presentations effective in communicating key messages within both education and clinical areas of practice.

Delegates also took part in workshops and breakout sessions to discuss challenges and innovations pertinent to each discipline.

CHESS provided a valuable opportunity for children’s hospital educators to share innovation and best practice. Of the event Vicky Nash, Head of Education for Academic and Apprenticeships, says: “This event was successful in achieving a truly multidisciplinary agenda with input from experts across the UK. CHESS is an important forum as we go forward in exploring new and innovative ways to work together, whilst maintaining high standards of patient care”.

Find out more about the Education and training offering at GOSH.