INMED2019 Annual Scientific Meeting

Institute for Lifecourse and Society (ILAS), NUI Galway

6th – 8th February 2019

The INMED ASM was held at NUI Galway this year. The conference was a collaborative endeavour shared between health professions educators from a variety of disciplines. After many years of trying and deliberation, INMED agreed to change its name to reflect its de facto multi-professional membership. The organisation will forthwith be called The Irish Network of Healthcare Educators, INHED.  The conference attracted 180 delegates over 3 days. This is a very good performance and compares well with previous conferences.

The INMED/INHED conference theme was about “health professions education: developing the whole person”. The conference theme was interpreted and presented in a number of different ways:

  1. David Shlim gave an excellent keynote on how a capacity for compassion in health professions students can be nurtured and supported. He also provided a very well attended workshop in which he outlined various approaches that are uses to develop capacity for compassion.
  2. Brian Hurwitz provided a thought-provoking keynote on how a study of the humanities and in particular text, can provide the substrate for whole person as opposed to technical training in the health professions.
  3. Barbara Wren provided a practical workshop and an insightful keynote that demonstrated how hospital communities can support each other and therefore there personhood through the use of protected narrative sessions, so-called Schwartz rounds.
  4. There were demonstrations of the person within the health professions student through performances of the NUI Galway medical school orchestra, an exhibition of anatomical artwork and through the medium of student narratives based on experiences in clinical workplaces.

The conference provided a wide array of preconference and within conference rapid infusion workshops. In terms of oral presentations. INMED/INHED decided to change our usual policy of providing slots for posters and instead to asked selected poster presenters to share their work as five-minute packages as so-called “Soundbyte” presentations. This appeared to work well and provided a platform for a wide variety of presenters to share educational ideas, evaluations and research outcomes.  Three oral presentations were selected as particularly strong and were given a podium presentation slot on the last day. The 3 presentations included:

  1. Medical Student in Nursing Elective – Promoting Development of the Whole Person. Nora McCarthy, Cedric Chua, David Kerins, Grace Morey, Margaret McKiernan (UCC).
  2. Empathy in training: Applied Drama and Communicating Bereavement in the Maternity Services. Aisling Smith (RCPI)
  3. Toward Understanding Civic Engagement in Health Professions’ Education:Perspectives of Students; Staff; and Public. Nor Haryanti Hashim, Dr Maureen Kelly, Dr Ruth Mc Menamin (College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, NUI Galway).
Best Oral Presentation

Best oral presentation on the day went to Dr Rory Stewart (QUB) for his presentation entitled ‘GP STAT: A General Practice Standardised Teaching Assessment Tool for Small Group Learning’.

Best Soundbyte Presentation

Best soundbyte presentation on the day went to Dr Orla Mongan (NUIG) for her presentation entitled ‘All for one and one for all! A high-fidelity simulation programme for interprofessional learning in undergraduates’.

The successful research and travel grant recipients for 2019 – 20 were also announced as follows:

Research in Medical Education (RIME) Grants
  1. Exploring the Political Validity of Selection Tools for Medicine. Dr Ruairi Connolly (NUIG)
  2. Interns’ readiness to prescribe insulin. Dr Deirdre Bennett (UCC)
  3. Student experiences of developing a professional identity in Graduate Entry Medicine Program (GEMS) at the University of Limerick. Dervla Kelly (UL)
INMED Education & Research Grants (ERG)
  1. Learning to swallow together – Interdisciplinary education of medical and speech and language therapy students around dysphagia management: a pilot study. Dr Helen Kelly (UCC)
  2. Digital preparedness for healthcare practice: critical scoping review and stakeholder consultation. Clare Thomson (QUB)
INMED Travel Grants
  1. Funding to attend the Canadian Conference on Medical Education (CCME) in Niagara Falls, April 2019. Dr  Helen Reid (QUB)
  2. Funding to attend the European Summit for Critical Thinking Education (June 3rd 2019) and the 39th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking (June 4th to 7th 2019) in Leuven, Belgium. Annalisa Manca (QUB)

INMED/INHED 2020 will be held at Trinity College Dublin on dates in February 2020 that have yet to be announced.  The conference will be a two-day conference with preconference workshops scheduled for the morning of the first day and the main conference beginning at lunchtime on the first day. This means that the 2nd day of the conference will also be a full day of activity.

INMED2019 Book of Abstracts