What we have produced
What we are doing
Flexible portfolio training (FPT) was launched as a pilot initiative within higher specialty training offered by Health Education England and the Royal College of Physicians. It protects 1 day a week (or 20% time equivalent) for non-clinical professional development.
A flexible portfolio trainee’s non-clinical day will be focused on one of four pathways:
• clinical informatics pathway
• medical education pathway
• quality improvement pathway
• research pathway
The pilot phase has now concluded and the management of FPT has been fully transferred over to Health Education England. This change has no effect on the training or supervision of those on the scheme and FPT will continue as normal.
The team at the Royal College of Physicians are honoured to have been a part of the pilot and are excited to see what the future holds.
Please visit HEE’s website for more information.
If you have any queries about FPT, please email: flexibleportfoliotraining@hee.nhs.uk
RCP Education announces Flexible Portfolio Training poster competition winners
First prize
MEMCast: advancing with future healthcare QIP Project, by Demi Wright, Rachel Saville, Cristina Cusu, Hari Ratan
We are a group of higher speciality trainees in the East Midlands, brought together by Flexible Portfolio Training under the supervision of Mr Hari Ratan. Our project was aimed at developing electronic learning resources for MRCP. The project started to run in September 2019, with Rachel, a Respiratory ST3 and Cristina, a Nephrology ST3 at the time. We had the pleasure of adding Demi to our team in August 2020, a Respiratory ST3 at the time. We continued our project alongside our clinical commitments as our training progressed.
We started to release our podcasts as MEMCast (Medicine East Midlands podcasts) in October 2019 on all available platforms (Apple podcasts, Spotify, Podomatic etc). We started publishing weekly episodes in January 2021. In the past year we had more than 50,000 downloads and more than 19,000 plays of our podcasts. Our podcasts are downloaded all around the world. We have released more than 110 episodes.
We developed our own Instagram account @mem.cast where we publish our weekly question of the week and fact of the week related to our podcast topic. The account currently has more than 500 followers. We also run a twitter account @mem_cast. Our next venture is YouTube videos for PACES preparation. We are also lucky to be joined by 2 new colleagues
Second prize
Improving processes and response times for inpatient referrals, by Syed Mujtaba Hasnain Nadir HEE North West, Anish Kuriakose Kuzhiyanjal HEE Mersey
“ I’m an ST5 in Gastroenterology and Clinical Informatics. I have thoroughly enjoyed my role as a Trainee Clinical Informatician as part of the RCP Flexible Portfolio Training Program. In this role I have attended a 10 part module in Health Informatics by the Newcastle University Institute of Coding which has helped me understand the fundamentals of this exciting field. I have been involved in a number of projects, but where Bleepa is quite special to me is that it was the first project I was involved with as a Clinical Informatician.”
Bleepa is a clinical communications platform with secure chat and the ability to share high grade medical imaging, with human factor engineering at it’s core. I was involved with the initial pilot and feasibility study at the Royal Oldham Hospital. This allowed me the opportunity to study referral pathways and to spot redundancies in various process flows, which were made more efficient with the introduction of Bleepa with a 56 % reduction in average time to accept a referral and a 49% to complete it.
Now more than ever, we need the NHS to run at 100% efficiency, and I believe informaticians can drive this change!
Third prize
Delivering a Junior Doctor Pastoral Support Service in a District General Hospital, by M. Stevenage, J. Tilley, H. Khoshnaw, T. Cookman and K. Potter
Connect is a service to enhance the working lives of junior doctors, supporting them to get the best out of their time at our trust. Run by a consultant radiologist and a geriatric trainee, Connect offers a range of strategies from social events (including exercise clubs and a bake off), to individual 1-1 support in difficult circumstances including training difficulties, personal issues and tailored support when responding to complaint, SI or other significant event. Connect works closely with existing education services, whilst maintaining independence from training and appraisal processes. Connect also facilitates a comprehensive International Medical Graduate (IMG) network to help IMGs find their feet when first working in the NHS.