30 July 2011 (Saturday) - Portfolio Verification

Following on from yesterday’s pre-registration portfolio verification, I’ve tweaked my website of advice. Specifically the link on the bottom left hand side “On the assessment day”.

I was thinking of adding a line “Verifiers are a mixed bag – some are overly obsequious, some are total bastards, and most are somewhere in between”, but I’m not sure this is exactly the wording I want….

22 July 2011 (Friday) - Getting a Job...

I received an email today through the “contact me” link on my website of advice for students tackling the pre-registration portfolio. In the first instance I’m pleased because this website is clearly working and being found by its target audience.

A very pleasant-sounding young lady had emailed to ask me “….I have an IBMS accredited degree and now looking to find an approved laboratory in which I can complete my training to attain the cert. of competence.  Can you recommend which laboratories to approach and how I go about contacting them, I have no idea where to start”.

My heart goes out to people like this young lady. Things were different when I was a lad: effectively we did an apprenticeship. We started in the lab having left school with “A” levels. (Or in my case having left school having failed miserably and having given up half way towards getting “A” levels).

We then did our academic qualifications on day release, with the academic subjects being taught by academic tutors at the colleges and universities, and with the specialist subjects being taught by the senior and chief biomedical scientists from the hospitals closest to the particular college or university you were studying at.

In a more enlightened era I would have been lecturing on a very regular basis at the university.

“Back in the day” you therefore got a good grounding in academic/scientific theory from those best qualified to provide it, and a good grounding in the nuts and bolts of your chosen profession from those best qualified to provide it.

Nowadays you don’t seem to get that at all. It’s (mostly) all academia and very little hands-on real-life input.

Quite frankly my piss is boiling that having been on a formally accredited honours degree, no one has taken the time to explain to this young lady the logistics of getting the job for which she has been preparing herself….

19 June 2011 (Sunday) - Redirection

The web addresses of my two websites of advice aren’t the easiest of domain names to remember. Perhaps these will be easier:

http://www.preregportfolio.co.uk/

http://www.haemspecialistportfolio.co.uk/

May 10, 2011 (Tuesday) - Pre Reg Portfolio (an introduction)

Another trainee is embarking on the pre-registration portfolio, so today I sat with her and told her what she's letting herself in for. In preparation for this I revisited the PowerPoint presentation I have on the subject. And since the presentation was originally compiled, things have changed:

• It had the old address for the website of advice, so that had to be changed
• The assessor no longer has the certificate of competence to award. This is now posted on at a later date.
• The assessor is now called a verifier.
• And I added another example to the presentation.

I spent a little while revising the presentation which is now downloadable from the website of advice for the pre-reg portfolio.

So much for thinking I could compile the presentation once and just keep re-using it: these things need constant updating...

April 12, 2011 (Tuesday) - Pre-Reg Portfolio Section 3a.3

When I verify pre registration portfolios I am usually rather unimpressed with the health & safety aspects of the portfolios that I assess. Being the last standard in the portfolio it’s plain that by the time people have come to address that standard, they are heartily fed up with the whole portfolio idea.

Which is a shame because by the time students come to address the last standard they have probably already provided plenty of evidence for that standard in the work they have done - without realising that they have done so.

I’ve added a section to my website of advice for the pre-registration portfolio specifically for the Health & Safety section. Hopefully just one A4 sheet listing the other evidences where H&S matters are covered will provide adequate evidence for section 3a.3.

I’ve suggested to two of my students that they try this approach. Let’s see if it works….

March 14, 2011 (Monday) - Websites of Advice

I spent a few minutes tweaking the pre-reg website this morning. I’ve added a couple of supervisor’s affidavit templates. One to affirm competence in workload management & interpersonal skills, and another to generally affirm competence.

I suppose I might go on to add several more of these, but I can’t help but wonder if just one general affidavit might be better than having several more specific ones. But having more stuff from supervisors makes for more evidence in the portfolio, which is usually what the verifier wants to see.

I also had a look at the specialist website as well. It struck me that the advice on how to actually produce the portfolio might be better off being at the top of the navigation bar, rather than at the bottom.

One of my loyal readers has offered to “help with the presentation of the websites”. I’ve given this offer careful thought, but at the risk of appearing ungrateful, I’m going to turn the offer down. The idea of my websites of advice is that they are exactly that – websites of advice. So many websites have flashing lights and Java applets and so many bells and whistles that one can easily lose sight of the object of the exercise. Which is something I’m not keen to do.

March 3, 2011 (Thursday) - Pre-Reg Portfolio Website

Yesterday I ended by saying “Now to re-vamp the website of advice for students tackling the pre-reg portfolio to include what I learned myself today…”

I’ve made a start by adding a page to that website outlining what happens on the day the portfolio is verified, and a downloadable checklist of required information.

October 30 2010 (Saturday) - Section 1b

I spent a few minutes this morning working on my website of advice for students tackling the IBMS pre-registration portfolio.

I’ve now revisited all of the set questions for section 1a, and have been through the various other evidences and added a page of evidences specifically aimed at providing evidence for section 1b. The obvious next steps are to do the same for sections two and three.

Perhaps I’m now wasting my time in that yesterday I applied for another of my students to have his portfolio assessed. This with be the third of my current batch of six students. Perhaps I’ve left it a bit late to be revising the website. The trouble is it takes this long to build up the experience to be able to make the suggestions.

Mind you I will always have more students in the future. And I suspect that word is getting around about this website….

October 25 2010 (Monday) - Pre Reg Portfolio

In my considered opinion, the most difficult part of the IBMS pre-registration portfolio is finding evidence for Sections 1a.1 – 1a.8. They are all very “admin & management” and are rather difficult for the new starter to get to grips with. To that end I’ve put together some set questions to provide evidence specifically for those sections.

Whilst they are based on something I shamelessly blagged from other people many years ago, now they bear very little (if any) relation to their original form. I’ve been working on (yet another) revision of these questions, and am about two thirds of the way through. Over the last week or so I’ve touched on such topics as professionalism, the working day, accountability and incident reporting. Over the next week I intend to beef up the secions on Health & Safety, the European Working Time Directive, CPD, and dealing with adversity.

If any of my loyal readers have any other ideas or suggestions for Portfolio section 1a.1 – 1a.8 evidences, I’d be very pleased to hear from you…

October 12 2010 (Tuesday) - A Portfolio Inspection

Some time in the mid 1990s I can remember going to the graduation ceremony of the first trainee whose training I oversaw. Since then I’ve formally overseen the training of undergraduate and newly appointed people at work. So far I’ve successfully seen the qualification of seventeen trainees. Today made eighteen.

One of the parts of my job that I like the most is when I get to go to the University or to other hospitals to asses and inspect other student’s pre registration portfolios. One of the parts of my job that I like the least is when someone else comes to inspect my student’s pre registration portfolios. We had such an inspection today.

We had a rather nerve-racking time waiting for the inspector to arrive. And an even more nerve wracking time waiting for him to inspect the portfolio. In the event she passed with flying colours. We knew she would anyway, but it’s still worrying.

For myself I was very interested to see what the inspector thought of her portfolio. I’ve put a lot of effort into producing a website of advice for students compiling pre registration portfolios over the last year. It would seem my efforts were vindicated. He was very impressed, especially praising the grid of evidences, a concept I have tried to drum into the heads of the students. He also asked if he could use one or two of my ideas at his own lab.

I suppose that my ideas for compiling pre-registration portfolios are along the right lines. I shall continue working on my website…

September 27th (Monday) - C.P.A.

Last Thursday I mentioned compiling a set of questions about the IBMS for the students pre-registration portfolio website. I got half way through preparing something this evening when I had a quick look at the actual standards of the portfolio. There’s not actually any requirement to do anything about the IBMS. That was a waste of my time.

Instead I revamped some questions I’d done a couple of years ago about the role of the CPA.

Like the questions I revised last week, these questions now seem to actually mean something, rather than just being the gibberish they once were. I suspect that all fifteen of the lists of my set questions could probably do with some revision.

September 23rd (Thursday) - The H.P.C.

This evening I spent a few minutes (ten) of my own time revising the set questions on the role of the HPC which I’ve offered as a suggestion as evidence for portfolio section 1a.1 over on my website of advice for students who are tackling the pre-registration portfolio. 
I didn’t like the layout I’d used, and I don’t think I’ve actually seriously revised the questions since I blagged the idea for them from a microbiologist some five years ago.

On re-reading them I had no idea what I was actually asking. I pity the poor students who’ve actually tried to make head or tail of them (!)

Having had a look through and re-worded most of them, I still don’t like the layout, but at least I think I know what I’m getting at with each question. Mind you I now can’t help but feel I should have a suggestion for a set of questions on the role of the IBMS too. I’ll do that later…

September 14th (Tuesday) - Some Mentoring

For once I actually had some time for the trainees, and had a couple of one-to-ones today. One of them has all but completed his pre-registration portfolio. I’m feeling a sense of completion, but probably nowhere near as much as he is.

The other is just about to embark on his pre-registration portfolio, and so over on another CPD project of mine I have a PowerPoint presentation designed to give such students an introduction into what they can expect when doing this portfolio. It’s only a year since I put that PowerPoint presentation together, and already it’s rather out of date. When I get a minute or two I shall put it right. Putting the PowerPoint presentation right is easy. But getting that revised PowerPoint presentation into the website…. I can’t remember how I did that…..

Moral of the story – this website will never be a finished product. It’s always going to be a work in progress. Which, for my personal CPD purposes, is ideal provided I actually keep up the work.

September 11th (Saturday) - Swear Words

I spent a little while fiddling with my pre-registration website today. I’ve recently discontinued updating the first draft of this website. A lot of it was done in work’s time, and so I’ve left the first draft elsewhere on the Internet. If work want it, they can have it. The revised version is mine!

Which has given me something of a dilemma. This pre registration website of mine is supposed to be a serious one; intended to give advice for students applying to become State Registered biomedical scientists. Today I added a section of advice on the subject of “Reflective Practice”. Am I wrong to use the word “b*ll*cks” in that advice?