COVID-19 has caused all of us to question the future of face-to-face education. In the Emergency Medicine community in the UK (and other countries around the world) we think we’ve been “ahead of the curve” for some years when it comes to education that’s not delivered in a classroom.

This is because round-the-clock shift work prevents a sizeable quota of the workforce from attending any particular classroom session; and being needed for patients at a moment’s notice means it’s often more effective (and realistic!) to educate IN the Emergency Department itself.

Some ideas on how to achieve that were discussed on a Royal College of Emergency Medicine national Clinical Leaders video call today – themed on education. On behalf of our amazing EM3 Education Team, Dr Ffion Davies, Consultant, delivered a talk titled “Educating in the New Era”. Here are a few snippets…

Every day is a school day, they say. Well, it is if you get asked a question and just spend a moment reframing your answer and helping the learner understand your thinking.

Up to 10 participants can get involved for a short 20-minute Sim, if you set a time to do it, with some basic scripts from EM3 or other FOAMed sites.

With some planning ahead you can offer the learner some resources to do background reading before the teaching session, and some others to take away after the session – sometimes called the #FOAMed prescription (to take home).

This can be imagined as a sandwich – with the teacher/expert providing the ‘filling’. It’s important to recognise that learners all have their own styles and preferences for their “homework” as illustrated by this diagram.

An EVEN BETTER more sophisticated ‘learning sandwich’ uses Spaced Repetition to lay down true long-term memory of what was talked about. This means either revisiting the topic a few days or 2-3 weeks later – or even on the day! We have used this technique in our drills and simulations this year. We started with our 6 Resus drills, and when COVID-19 struck, we developed an Adults / Paediatric “Voiceless“ Team Comms drill whilst wearing AGP-level PPE; plus a Time-Critical Telephone Communications with Relatives role-play sim. All these utilise Spaced Repetition.

So there you have it! Use the hours that you would have spent preparing and delivering classroom-based education into putting together some downloadable learning packages. Use every opportunity to weave them into the day’s work, and share them via email to your department or social media for everyone to use. We guarantee that more staff will learn more – and remember it!