Training in Anaesthesia Highlands of Scotland

The online platform used by all UK anaesthetists in training and many other anaesthetists now has 25,000 users. Lifelong Learning | The Royal College of Anaesthetists (rcoa.ac.uk)

I attended an update session for LLP regional “leads”, in which many leads fed back to the college recent bugbears, glitches, and requests for improvements. They mentioned they will publish articles in the bulletin and are looking to do a podcast.

There are many system updates and improvements in LLP that are invisible to us. When as individuals we send an issue in to them at lifelong@rcoa.ac.uk We often get little by way of reply but I was heartened to find here: System updates and improvements | The Royal College of Anaesthetists (rcoa.ac.uk) that a glitch I reported wherein an ES was prevented from curating or correcting comments made within a Multisource Feedback, was actually fixed since I reported it.

Here’s a summary of the most interesting things I gleaned from the meeting.

The college announced some imminent improvements. For example:

• When a doctor in training sends an MSF out, rather than all recipients just getting an email into their spam folder, the MSF will appear like any other Supervised Learning Event – into their “assessments” tab. This should be easier to find and complete.
• When a supervisor sends out requests for a Multi Trainer Report, they will be allowed to enter “guidance notes” which might assist trainers identifying the correct doctor and the purpose of that particular MTR.

After a doctor CCTs, the RCOA envisage that their LLP learning portfolio will only be available for 6 months. During this time they must download the data before it is deleted from college servers.

There have been requests for a thumbnail portrait of trainees to avoid misidentification when trainers complete MSF or MTR. But there was some kind of GDPR barrier to this.

The help and support page has been recently expanded and improved Help and support | The Royal College of Anaesthetists (rcoa.ac.uk) There is specific support for those on a dual programme with ICM, with their own email address and online guidance including how to create a dual Supervised Learning Event here Lifelong Learning | The Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (ficm.ac.uk)

If you want to request a change to functionality, feel free to complete this form Lifelong Learning Platform Change Request Form | The Royal College of Anaesthetists (rcoa.ac.uk) They do take requests seriously.

There will be an online workshop about Acute Care Common Stem on the LLP, this will be 4th November. There is another workshop for supervisors on 4th December.

The CPD/CME area of the LLP has matured for those doctors who have completed training. You can now assign categories to the activities you are logging. The college seems keen for this area of the platform to be a complete support to Domain 1 of the Appraisal process. You can optionally link an activity to a framework of CPD skills and the team welcomes any addition to the skill list they have, feel free to contact and make suggestions. RCOA encourages you to explore this improved functionality under the “learner” tab and create CPD activity. It also supports Recognition of Trainer by optionally linking to the seven domains of medical education.

There is an opening, open to all users of the LLP, for the regional LLP leads coordinator and deputy. Application process here – Regional Leads | The Royal College of Anaesthetists (rcoa.ac.uk) Apart from myself in Highland, the other regional leads in North of Scotland are Dr Saniklidou and Dr Kerr, both doctors in training in Grampian. On November 1st there will also be openings for doctors to assist with development and improvement of the logbook.

Next LLP Leads meeting is January, so do communicate with one of the Leads if you want something brought up, or feel free to continue emailing lifelong if it seems more appropriate.