Foreword

Welcome to the new edition of your Deanery newsletter. The summer weather has arrived and as many of you know it could be short lived; it is important to ensure you make the most of it. For those of you for whom this is your first summer in Scotland the near 20 hours of daylight can take some getting used to, but it does make up for the darker days in winter. 

Many of you will be through the ARCP process and have an outcome 6 and be applying for your CCT- congratulations and good luck we look forward to you joining our body of educators! 

There has been changes in the Deanery and whilst we are sad to say goodbye to Alastair Maclellan we are delighted to welcome Nitin Gambhir to the team. In his introduction to you all, Nitin describes his journey to become Lead Dean Director. 

This month the GMC published their EDI report https://www.gmc-uk.org/-/media/gmc-site/about/how-we-work/edi-targets---progress-and-priorities-for-2023.pdf. In this report we can see improvement and that progress and change is happening.  To compliment this report and to highlight what is happening in Scotland we are sharing the work of the Advancing Equity in Medical Education Group. This report documents the activities and achievements of the group in it’s first year of operation. 

The Once for Scotland Approach to Equality and Diversity Essential Learning will support us all to understand how we contribute to making the workplace in Scotland fair.  NES have developed a training module aiming to cover the key elements of  equality, diversity, and human rights, and this module will replace the existing one on Turas that many organisations use for their mandatory training. Also discussed is the new Cultural Humility learning resource which complements the essential learning resource.  

We then feature an article from colleagues in NHS Grampian illustrating that it is not only OK to raise the issues of race in the workplace but it is essential. 

We must collectively embrace equality, diversity and inclusion activity and ensure we not only know what to do but do what we know.  

We celebrate success in our first item on the NES Medical Directorate Annual Awards – well done to all the winners and runners up. This was part of the NES Annual Conference and videos of the full conference are now available via the included link. 

Just announced is the 2023 Scottish Medical Appraisers Annual Conference on 13 September 2023.  It will be delivered remotely via MS Teams and recordings of sessions will be made available afterwards. Topics include unconscious bias, active bystander, cultural competency and neurodiversity. 

On the message of CPD we have full details on the Developing Excellence in Medical education conference on 4th/5th December 2023. 

This month has seen the announcement of doctors strikes in July, all educational activity timetabled for the strike days will be postponed or rearranged. Please see the industrial action web page for more detailed information.   

Remember to keep submitting articles or suggestions for content, take care and take breaks.  

Professor Emma Watson
Executive Medical Director, NHS Education for Scotland

If you have work you would like to highlight in this newsletter, contact Scotland Deanery.