DIMAH

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DIMAH Meeting Minutes: University of Sheffield 11th May 2017

Held on the 11th May 2017 at Barber House, Annexe: The School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sheffield.

Present: Nisha Dogra, Riya George, Jon Ward, Enam-ul-Haque, Pete Leftwick, Margot Turner, Barry Ewart, Rebecca Farrington, Aarti Bansal, Davidner Singh, Jia Li & Helen Orton.

 

  1. Apologies: Shuangyu Li, Rachel Lindley, Adrian Barrowdale, Esther Murray, Judith Cabot, Kam Bhui, Elora Baishab and Angela Rowlands.
  1. Minutes from the last meeting

Agreed as a true record

  1. Matters arising and action points from the last meeting
  • Student engagement: Discussion on emphasising the value of representation from undergraduate medical students and exploring ways of engaging students in the work of DIMAH. Concerns were raised on how student representation for DIMAH would be determined and what role medical students would play. Potential avenues for exploring student involvement included the following suggestions:
  1. Student conferences and diversity societies such as GLAD, Global Health Society etc. being invited to present their work
  2. The idea of a student competition with the support of the GMC to create a poster or video about their work or interests in diversity.
  3. Bringing a medical student from each institution to the DIMAH meetings and involving students in the discussions and dialogue around how improve diversity education and then subsequently planning student engagement according to their feedback.
  4. Inviting medical students to participate in writing a blog about diversity on the website and or set up a student forum to stimulate discussion on diversity issues that are relevant to medical students.
  5. To organise a separate student diversity group with various student representations from different medical schools, this can be arranged alongside DIMAH meetings or as separate Student DIMAH meeting.
  6. Encourage each medical institution to have a student as part of their institutional membership with DIMAH.
  7. Riya George shared experiences of her teaching partnership award work at the University of Leicester engaging fourth and fifth year medical students in the development of curriculum on diversity education and the feedback obtained from medical students through a questionnaire on their perceived diversity needs.

Actions:

  • Jon Ward to create a document outlining a summary of the discussions made around how to initate student engagement in DIMAH and to submit this to DIMAH members before the next meeting on the 13.07.2017.
  • Riya George to share information from student questionnaires from her work at the University of Leicester depending on student consent and agreement to this.
  • Nisha Dogra to liaise with the GMC regarding the possibility of organising a student competition and enquire on available funding streams to further this work.
  1. Membership updates
  • Current members: Pete Leftwick reported that 63 members have successfully joined DIMAH with a total of £810.00 pounds present in the DIMAH account.
  • Encouraging membership: DIMAH members discussed how we can engage more individuals to become members, the following suggestions were made which are outlined in the action points below.

Actions:

  • Aarti Bansal: Inform a group of GP colleagues at Yorkshire and Humber at Health Education England to join DIMAH.
  • Nisha Dogra: To raise awareness of DIMAH membership to colleagues at Royal Colleges to join DIMAH.
  • Rebecca Farringdon: To ask ASME Community Heads to get involved with DIMAH work.
  • DIMAH members attending and participating in the ASME and AMEE Conference 2017 to inform academics and colleagues of DIMAH.
  1. Engaging membership and training
  • Twitter chats: Riya George, Enam Haque and Jia Li reported positive feedback on the last twitter chat in February 2017, and agreed a minimum of four members is needed to effectively facilitate the twitter chat discussions and regular twitter chats need to be arranged to ensure momentum. DIMAH members discussed new topics for upcoming twitter discussions, these included:
  1. Aarti Bansal: Suggested revisiting the influence of ‘political correctness’ on diversity education and facilitating a discussion on the link between patient safety and diversity i.e. how does diversity improve patient safety? DIMAH members noted this topic on patient safety would be attractive to our GMC members.
  2. Rebecca Farringdon: Proposed exploring the topic of ‘self-awareness’ i.e. how does one become self-aware? How does one introspect and self-reflect? How do you recognise your own biases and prejudices?
  3. Jon Ward: Suggested a topic on unconscious bias and culture, particularly in reference to education. Potential questions that could be explored are what is the ideal student? What is the ideal teacher? Pete Leftwick suggested further to this idea focusing on unpacking personal prejudices, with questions such as what are your prejudices about students and how do you deal with them, to be included.

-DIMAH members discussed the possibility of exploring new mediums for encouraging discussions such as using the forum on the DIMAH website, setting up a DIMAH face-book and instead of asking a series of questions to devise a diversity case scenario which is then discussed among members.

Actions:

  • Riya George, Shuangyu Li, Enam-ul-Haque & Jia Li to set up a meeting to discuss availability of upcoming dates to facilitate twitter-chat discussions.
  • Enam-ul-Haque to prepare and send a twitter guide to DIMAH members prior to the next meeting on the 13.07.2017.
  • All DIMAH members to post links on twitter regarding new or interesting academic articles which Enam Haque can then archive under the #DIMAHUK.
  • Faculty development & sharing of good practice: Discussion on changing the format of the meetings, highlighting the importance of including CPD sessions. DIMAH members agreed we should have longer DIMAH meetings (09.30am – 16.30pm) to allow for CPD sessions, with two CPD sessions per year in different institutional locations. Shorter DIMAH meetings can be arranged in London and practicalities on arranging tele-conference meetings for those members should be explored in the London venues.

Actions:

  • Riya George, Enam-Haque, Jia Li & Shuangyu Li to arrange a CPD session on advice and guidance on using twitter and allow time for discussion and work on website development namely arranging podcasts, forums and blogs.
  • Riya George to arrange for John Prendergast (website developer) to attend the DIMAH CPD session on the 13.07.2017 via Skype (or in person if feasible).
  1. Conference updates
  • ASME Conference University of Exeter 2017:

–Margot Turner, Rebecca Farrington and Aarti Bansal have had accepted a workshop on diversity.

–Riya George is one of the three finalists for Best Original Research Paper Award (BORPA).

–Riya George has had two abstracts on her research about how to improve and evaluate diversity education in health educational institutions accepted.

  • AMEE Conference Helsinki, Finland 2017:

–Enam Haque has had one abstract accepted on his work on widening participation at the University of Manchester.

–Margot Turner will be attending AMEE with medical students at St George’s and will be presenting their work on how to embed diversity into the curriculum.

–Riya George has had one abstract accepted on her research about how to improve and evaluate diversity education in health educational institutions accepted.

  • STEM for Britain 2017:

-Riya George achieved the Silver Award at the STEM for Britain 2017 academic event at the Parliamentary House of Commons in March 2017 and her research was featured on the BBC.

  1. Papers, reports and disseminations
  • CAIPE Journal: Jon Ward, Shuangyu Li, Candan Ertubey and Jia Li are in the process of a reviewing literature for a paper on inter-professional development.
  • Aarti Bansal has had a paper accepted to the Family Medicine and Health Journal.
  • Shuangyu Li, Angela Rowlands and colleagues have had a paper accepted on working with interpreter guidelines.
  • Nisha Dogra will be doing a plenary at the All Wales Curriculum Conference on 24th May 2017 in Cardiff on diversity education.
  • Discussion on potential upcoming DIMAH conferences, members suggested considering both organising a national and international conference, however considerable administration support will be needed to support this endeavour.
  1. Liaison with other groups
  • Margot Turner attended the GMC Outcomes event on the 28.02.2017 and assisted in reviewing the different outcomes on diversity education, emphasising the need to shift away from a knowledge or a list approach to diversity to learning about and reflecting upon one’s self. Nisha contributed to this meeting with written evidence including the DIMAH perspective.
  1. Research updates
  • Jia Liu discussed her PhD Research exploring how international medical students develop cultural competence. Jia’s PhD will involve a mapping exercise where all learning objectives across the MBBS 5 years will be reviewed to determine where the equality and diversity agenda is situated. This will then be followed by an ethnographic research project exploring how international medical students develop cultural competence in both formal and informal settings.
  1. Website review
  • Suggestions for improvement: Improvements to the website were thoroughly discussed in regards to the under-use of the website. Riya George feed-back key information from the website visitor statistics regarding utilisation of the website by interested users, international interest and particular concerns on the statistics for returning users. The following actions below were agreed:

Actions:

  • CPD session at the next DIMAH meeting on the 13.07.2017 will be used to plan and discuss changes for website development and improvement. The meeting will also be used to produce materials for the website
  • Barry Ewart to send Riya George information regarding his blog and videos on homelessness and domestic violence on diversity to post on the website.
  • All DIMAH members to include in their email signature their DIMAH role and web-link to the DIMAH website if permitted by their organisations.
  • All DIMAH members to ask their institutions if the DIMAH website link can be posted on their university home page and included in newsletters.
  • Nisha Dogra to liaise with Andy Ward on posting podcasts/ videos used for UKCCC presentations on the diversity website and also student podcasts produced for the C2ME project.
  • Nisha Dogra to liaise with the GMC to ask if we could put their logo on our DIMAH website.
  • All DIMAH members to prepare a podcast for the DIMAH website before the next meeting on 13.07.2017. The podcasts will be displayed on a continual rotation on the DIMAH website.
  • Enam Haque to check with John Prendergast if existing animation videos and podcasts are displayed on the DIMAH website and to discuss with John whether posts on the DIMAH forum can be linked to members’ emails.
  1. Finances
  • Discussion on maintaining the website and financial up-keep. Nisha Dogra has to date paid for the DIMAH website for the past four years. The current running costs are £1200 (£1000 per year for DIMAH website maintenance and £200 for Ipage per year).
  • Pete Leftwick suggested using the finances available in the DIMAH account for payment of Ipage as a start and is hopeful that members will renew their membership in the coming months. However this leave a shortfall for the web maintenance which will need to be found.
  • Helen Orton suggested enquiring around potential sponsorships for DIMAH to raise finances from different professional groups to maintain the website.

Actions:

  • Nisha Dogra to draft an email about asking the GMC for potential funds to support the DIMAH website and raising the issue of having diversity leads at different medical schools (as this may increase membership and attendance at meetings if we compare to the professionalism where every school has a lead). Nisha will email draft for comments as needed.
  1. Any other business
  • DIMAH would like to formally thank Angela Rowlands for the work she has done for DIMAH as secretary and thank Riya George who is now the new secretary.
  • DIMAH would also like to thank Aarti Bansal and Davidner Singh for hosting the DIMAH meeting at the University of Sheffield.
  • Discussion on DIMAH meeting location and format of the meetings, agreed to have four meetings per year, with two meeting being longer (09.30am – 16.30pm) and including a CPD session and two meetings being shorter (10.30am – 15.30pm) and possible to be held in London.

Actions:

  • To be raised on the agenda for the next DIMAH meeting: 1.) Student engagement, 2.) Issues of different DIMAH members charring the meeting and 3.) Margot Turner’s DIMAH reflections.
  1. Next Meetings
  • Arrange an informal open meeting after the ASME Conference (University of Exeter, 21st– 23rd June 2017) for those DIMAH members attending the conference and for those individuals who would like to learn more about DIMAH.
  • Arrange an informal open meeting after the RCGP Event (Liverpool, 12th – 14th October 2017) for those individuals who would like to learn more about DIMAH.
  • 13th July 2017: 09.30am – 16.30pm at the University of Leicester
  • 16th October 2017: 10.30am – 15.30pm at either the GMC, Euston Road or St George’s (TBC)
  • 16th January 2018: 09.30pm – 16.30pm at either the University of Leeds or the University of Liverpool (TBC)
  • 23rd March 2018: 10.30am – 15.30pm at either the GMC, Euston Rd, or Bart’s and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry (TBC)

Actions:

  • Riya George to liaise with DIMAH members attending ASME conference (21st – 23rd June 2017) to arrange an informal open meeting afterwards.
  • Aarti Bansal to liaise with colleagues attending the RCGP event (12th– 14th October 2017) to arrange an informal open meeting afterwards.
  • Nisha Dogra to arrange a venue for the next meeting (13.07.2017)
  • Nisha Dogra to liaise with the GMC regarding using their venue to host some of the London DIMAH meetings.