DIMAH group meeting minutes held at University of Liverpool 21 July 2016
Present: Angela Rowlands, Nisha Dogra (Chair), Riya George, Enam-ul-Haque, Candan Ertubey, Jon Ward, Rebecca Farrington, Pete Leftwick, Barry Ewart, Adrian Barrowdale (GMC).
1. Apologies
Shuangyu Li, Margot Turner, Davinder Singh, Rachel Lindley, Aarti Bansal.
2. Feedback from Medical School’s Council conference
Nisha sent out the conference report a couple of weeks after the event. She received little feedback so assumed people thought it was an accurate presentation. Jon has summarised the notes from the small groups and these are on the website. Key points that were identified from the conference included: perceived lack of support in delivery of diversity training from some institutions, lack of faculty development and difficulties integrating diversity into the curriculum. There appeared to be divides in how diversity is delivered with some institutions having labelled diversity modules and others identifying where diversity appeared in their curriculum. Other issues that arose were how diversity is assessed and how do you resource diversity teaching? Some areas have little ethnic diversity. A member at the meeting who had attended the conference described it as excellent and encouraged the group to keep up momentum. He had achieved 4 out of 6 of the action points that he had committed to at the conference. He is going to document these and submit them for posting on the website. It was suggested that other members do the same. It was discussed that we could produce a report about what people can do to teach diversity. However, we have done this with the AMEE guide. People at the conference appeared engaged. Posters helped identify what was being done. Action points identified by delegates included 22 action points concerning further development in diversity teaching and 11 planning mapping of diversity throughout the curriculum. A discussion took place regarding how we might support people further. Our website states that DIMAH will ‘ develop and share materials’ Nisha might reword this. It was suggested that we develop podcasts about what DIMAH has to offer. We are all encouraged to produce one. We had a small response of 17 to the conference evaluation survey. These were included in the report.
Action: Pete to draft an email to send out to organisations to offer support workshops.
Action: Enam to take the lead for development of podcasts about what DIMAH has to offer.
Action: Nisha to contact Trevor Gibbs about doing a pre-conference Workshop at AMEE in 2017 – to be done at AMEE conference in Barcelona.
Action: Barry and others to write up action points from conference and submit them for the website.
3. Membership update – Pete.
Pete reported that 3 organisations and 3 individual members had joined DIMAH. The current bank account balance is £195. He reported that some Universities had problems paying by bank transfers and suggested that we might like to start taking credit cards. Pete will ask the bank if this is possible. There may be a charge. Some individuals had been sent invoices but have not yet paid. Pete will chase these individuals and institutions. It was asked how the money will be used. We pay £1000 a year for all of John’s website work over a year and Nisha has agreed to continue to fund this until the end of 2017. The membership money will enable us to take risks in organising conferences. Other organisations use funds for things like catering, attending annual general conferences etc. It was decided to also encourage international membership. It was hoped that the GMC and the Medical School’s Council might join.
The Royal Colleges are interested in a round table discussion about what their agenda is.
Action: Enam to produce a tweet for his international Twitter followers based on an email that Pete will provide.
Action: Pete to chase unpaid invoices and ask the bank about credit card payments.
A meeting is set up in September with the GMC to think about the diversity agenda.
Adrian is developing supplementary guidance in diversity education and curriculum design. It was suggested that DIMAH could co construct this.
4. Conference updates
Rebecca presented her work on professional identify formation in medical students at ASME Belfast.
Margot is presenting on assessment in diversity at AMEE.
AMEE has a Diversity strand this year including an open DIMAH and diversity meeting on 30 August 5.45-7pm hosted by Nisha and Janusz Janczukowicz.
Nisha is running a workshop at the EACH conference in Heidelberg on diversity and communication
Nisha and colleagues are presenting pilot work in diversity training for IMG with the Royal College Psychiatrists at a joint meeting of the Royal GP and RCPSych in December.
Enam is facilitating a Skype project with other countries. These involve student led discussions with students from other countries to learn about their medical cultures. It was discussed that we should add ‘potential projects’ as a standing agenda item in future meetings.
Pete attended the Comet conference and felt it lacked presentations on diversity.
- The ideas of having DIMAH Regional Events plus the possibility of exploring having Bronze, Silver, and Gold Awards for Diversity Teaching Practice in Schools around the country were suggested.
5. Papers/reports/disseminations
Nisha suggested we record projects on a Gantt chart to help organise our projects and monitor progress.
ASME or AMEE might be asked to help us to write diversity papers that are more likely to be accepted.
Rebecca has done some evaluation on diversity teaching after attendance on OSCE performance. She has data there but no one to analyse it. Members suggested people who might be able to help.
Shuangyu and Angela plus international colleagues have had a Special Interest Group accepted by rEACH called Language and Cultural Discordance in Healthcare Communication. Angela encouraged others to get involved in the group. The group have an open meeting at the EACH conference in Heidelberg on 9 September 12 noon. The group are submitting a grant proposal for research funding from the Welcome Trust. Shuangyu is the Chair of the group and Angela the Secretary. Visit:
http://www.each.eu/research/r-activities/sigs/language-cultural-discordance-healthcare-communication/
Nisha is working on a pain project with a Baltimore University on the diversity component of pain. It involves the training of researchers. The work will be presented at the American Pain Conference in Texas. A framework will be developed.
Aarti and Nisha are submitting an editorial to the British Journal of Hospital Medicine on diversity.
Leicester University have a new diversity curriculum including 6 hrs on diversity in MBBS induction and we hope to evaluate this.
Riya’s Phd is ongoing.
6. Liaison with other groups
CAIPE- Candan has been to their AGM and has become a member. They have a conference It is in Oxford Brooks 6-9 of September. They are interested in a paper from us about DIMAH. Candan hopes to attend the conference. Jon to join Shuangyu and Candan in writing the paper.
7. Next steps
In some ways we have met the original DIMAH agenda in terms of setting up a framework and a conference. We discussed changing our remit. A discussion took place including suggestions of making the group more research focused, raising our profile in teaching and cascading information to others, advertising new and ongoing projects on the website and the development of assessment. We discussed the continuation of PDP section of the meeting. Margot had offered to do a session on assessment. After much discussion of what to include for the next PDP session it was decided to focus it on our thoughts about what the future remit of the group should be. Members are free to email their thoughts to Angela prior to the meeting.
Other next steps:
Working with Royal Colleges – Nisha has written to Academy of Medical Royal Colleges so we can pull together the College perspectives – waiting to hear.
Working with student groups.
8. CPD session
Riya piloted her Situational Judgement Tests with the group and received feedback.
The group thanked Pete for his hospitality.
9. Next meeting
October 14 2016 Luton. Venue to be confirmed.
New members welcome
Join at www.dimah.co.uk