Health Education England (HEE) in the West Midlands invites Public Health Speciality Registrars to lead teams of Foundation Year 2 doctors to work with community organisations on local health and well-being projects. The projects will be completed within 3-6 months (December to April ), during which you will be required to provide leadership to a small team and ensure they are working with the community organisations in a constructive manner to achieve the aims of their specific projects.
How will participation benefit my training?
The Scheme gives you the freedom to manage your own project to completion with an intelligent and enthusiastic team. You will gain experience of working closely with community organisations to help address the health needs of deprived communities. Working on a project will provide the opportunity to demonstrate a range of skills across the curriculum. These include the opportunity to benefit from your team's feedback on your leadership from the MSF for KA9 and may provide good material for reflection for KA10. The presentation evening is also a showcase for your leadership abilities.
What is the time commitment?
Last year most reported spending between 2-4 days in total working on the project and one spent 4-6 days.
Who can be a team leader?
This opportunity is probably most useful for those in years 3, 4 and 5 but would also provide some useful Part B experience.
What will be my main role?
You will provide advice, support and leadership to the team. The Scheme was set up in part to provide you with leadership opportunities. The aim is to lead the project team to completion of the project. You have three main roles:
· You are the team leader and how you lead will depend on you, the project and the team.
· You are a technical advisor
· To provide a positive role model for public health for junior trainees and for community organisations
You will need to find your own style and methods of doing things. This may change throughout the course of the project. For example you may provide more direction at the beginning of the project and find you can step back towards the end, or you may find a natural leader emerges from the start within the group and you can concentrate less on a direct project management role and act more as a support and technical advisor.
What support will I get?
New for this year - in response to feedback from last year there will be 2 x 2hr peer support sessions for the SpRs, one before the project starts and one half way through the project period.
HEE WM will provide:
· A day’s Mentor training if you haven’t already done the course
· Two 2 hour peer support sessions – one before the start of the project to work on practical aspects of running the project e.g. working with a remote team, working with your community organisation to shape the project etc and one half way through to exchange ideas, report progress etc.
· It is expected that educational supervision for your work on the project will be provided by your current ES.
For queries contact sally.james@hee.nhs.uk on 0121 695 2481. To apply to the Scheme, email publichealthtraining@wm.hee.nhs.uk