Professor Shafi Ahmed

Transitions matter: The theory, research and practice of transitions in medical education

Transitions matter. They provide opportunities for intense learning but are also challenging. Drawing on the literature and her team-based research on medical education transitions, Charlotte will talk about: (i) What transitions are; (ii) How transitions can be researched; and (iii) How medical students and trainees can be helped to navigate transitions.

Professor Charlotte Rees
Head of School of Health Sciences
University of Newcastle
NSW, Australia

Building high performance healthcare teams – culture, relationships and translational simulation

Improving teamwork and shaping culture in healthcare is easy to say, but hard to do.
Team training, catchy communication acronyms, and off-site team building might not realise the promise of high performing teams in the complex environment of 21^st century healthcare.
Maybe simulation offers more than we think – if used with agility – to explore work environments and the people in them, to test better systems or practices, and to embed ‘best practice’ once we know what that is.
And maybe simulation can actually shape culture, and help high performing healthcare teams get better, together.

Professor Victoria Brazil
Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Simulation
Gold Coast Health Service, Queensland, Australia

The importance of generalist skills for multimorbidity patient care

The proportion of patients with two or more medical conditions continues to increase. The majority of over 75s now have 3 or more conditions and almost one in five 40-69 year olds have at least 2 conditions. This trend remains a challenge to the entire medical profession. Whilst greater specialisation, particularly in secondary care, has improved clinical outcomes for individual conditions, generalist skills are becoming increasingly important when faced with patients with multiple long-term conditions. Shifting back to maintaining and celebrating generalism in the medical workforce is critical to respond to the changing pattern to health and disease in the population.

Professor Chris Whitty
Chief Medical Officer
Department of Health and Social Care, London, UK