LAHORE – “Contact with real situations is a unique opportunity for clinical learning, but developing and supporting the educational experience alongside the demands of the workplace is a challenge.”
Addressing the participants of a workshop here at the University of Health Sciences on Monday, Dr Kay Mohanna, Director of Postgraduate Medicine, School of Medicine, Keele University, UK said that clinical education was located at the workplace – out-patient departments, hospital wards, general practice clinics, emergency departments and operating theatres  where students, doctors and patients came together in the conjoint pursuit of clinical care and learning. The theme of the five-day workshop is “Supporting Clinical Learning at the Workplace”, and it is a part of UHS initiative to launch training programmes for general practitioners (GPs) in a bid to strengthen family medicine as an institution in Pakistan.
Dr Mohanna is on the National Council for the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) and is chair of the Midland RCGP with expertise in primary care, medical education and appraisal and career support. The aim of the workshop is to support excellence in clinical leadership by developing educational opportunities; carrying out research and supporting practitioners at their workplace; enabling the development of clinicians as knowledgeable and effective leaders and facilitating the development of high performing clinical service teams.
“Doctors learn from experience, which we define as authentic, real human contact that helps them learn about health, illness and disease, and how to be a doctor,” Dr Mohanna said, adding that there were good reasons for shifting the workplace educational focus from teaching to learning. She was of the view that the subject matter learnt from clinical encounters.