health professionals in training group

SIGN health professionals in training group – who, what, why?

In 2009, SIGN Council established a subgroup to look at the needs of healthcare professionals in training and
ways in which SIGN could support these. The group exists to:

help SIGN Council maintain a relevance to junior clinical staff in its work programme, and
provide healthcare professionals in training with educational resources for evidence based medicine.

Current membership of the core group is:

Chair, Dr Keith Brown, Chair of SIGN Council
Dr Laura Cameron, ST5 in Learning Disability Psychiatry, West of Scotland Health Professionals in Training Group
Dr Wendy Craig, General Surgery SpR, North East Scotland, SIGN Council member
Dr Rachel Green, GP ST2, South East Scotland, SIGN Council member
Dr Lydia Simpson, Obs & Gyn StR
Dr Eleanor Watson Gastroenterology ST6, South East Scotland
Katherine Farquhar, Undergraduate medical student, Glasgow
Dania Morhij, Undergraduate medical student, Glasgow
Rachel Steel, Undergraduate dental student, Glasgow
Erin Toal, trainee psychologist
With support from the SIGN Executive.

There are two main areas of current activity:

helping healthcare professionals in training to acquire skills for audit, which is often an essential
component of their educational contract
working alongside NHS Education Scotland (NES) to provide educational modules within DOTS
from 2011.

This work complements the priority recently given by SIGN to the dissemination and implementation of their
guidelines. It is hoped that making guidelines accessible and relevant to healthcare professionals in training
may facilitate this. We have, therefore, designed audit tools which may be helpful towards both objectives.

SIGN Guidelines and Audit – tools for junior medical staff

SIGN guidelines provide an ideal framework for audit. They define current evidence based practice, against
which local practice may be compared and measured. Practice can then be adjusted and re-audited to test for
improvement. Through implementation of PDSA methodology (Plan-Do-Study-Act), whereby small samples
of patients are audited frequently, practice may quickly be improved and compliance with the guideline
achieved. There is, therefore, potential benefit for both the healthcare professional in training, and their
department.

Knowing where to start can be a problem, so we have devised a series of audit tools which should allow
interested individuals to audit their local practice.