Luckily to help with this, I have connected with Ann Sunderland; Ann has a wealth of experience from starting off as a Primary Care Nurse, Nurse Educator, a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam and Huddersfield Universities, was the chair of the Clinical Skills Network, set up a simulation centre and is a clinical advisor for Oxford Medical Simulation (OMS) working on Primary Care specific content for the website…. Amongst other things! I hope to learn a lot from her and take advantage of her skills and abilities to provide us with some training using OMS as a learning tool.

Take a look at OMS here

I have spoken with the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC) on the Olympic Legacy Park in Sheffield and they have agreed to host our testing.

Not only is it a modern, purpose-built facility with excellent, slightly larger consulting rooms, classrooms and lecture hall but the project also aligns with the ethos of the AWRC and their pursuit of research, change and excellence. This also builds on the relationship with Sheffield Hallam University and their ambitions for future and enhancing the experience of the student with simulated learning.

Click on the image below to take a virtual tour

We hope to be able to start delivering some meaningful training from the AWRC that will make a difference to the learners.

At this point I want to thank some of our Workforce & Training Hub colleagues as their guidance and advice on potential topics and scenarios we should concentrate on has helped shape the testing and the training to be delivered! It’s also exciting to discover that we can tap into previously lesser delivered topics to our Primary Care colleagues such are race equality using artificial intelligence! So, thank you, Sarah, Javi, Rob, Emma and Rehanna!

I’m spurred on as we near the completion of one of our custom-built avatars! Working with Keele University on these has been exciting, enlightening and actually really easy! They have done the hard bit in the building of it but again the scenario and story line we have been creating could not have come to life without our Health Inequalities leads! Thank you, Blerta & Philippa!

I have to turn my attention now to creating a case study and evaluation template as each of these areas for testing will be treated as its own mini case study and evaluated on its own merits. Once we have a library of case studies, we know then what we’d like to put into longer term use, potentially for a longer testing period with more cohorts of learners using it. We don’t therefore waste money on multiple purchases of inappropriate licences and kit that don’t work out for us.

Its going to be busy with multiple lesson plans to be written, understanding how the technology works and trying to capture the information we need from the experience of the users but I’m hopeful that I’ve made the right connections within the industry, within the Academic Health Science Network, HEE and the TEL team in order to make that a reality.

I’m hoping that in a couple of blogs’ time I might have something special to share with you; I’m looking at creating a video blog with a special ‘virtual’ guest….. Something that will hopefully bring my words and descriptions to life, literally!

Don’t forget that if you want to be involved you can apply via this form. I can’t wait to hear from you!

Dear reader, I’m going to leave you with this.