Clinical Teaching

Inspire through Clinical Teaching

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” - Nelson Mandela

Inspire Through Clinical Teaching is a teaching skills course based on the principle that teaching is a core skill for health professionals but also a distinct skill from medical expertise.  You may be an expert in your own field but still feel ill equipped to pass along knowledge to your students and peers.  This problem is exacerbated in low and middle-income countries where people are expected to teach and take on leadership positions very early in their careers.  These teachers themselves may not have been trained by people or programs using the latest methods of medical education.  With this in mind, this course was developed with three main goals:

  1. To improve teaching of students in any discipline of healthcare at any level of training
  2. To mentor excellent teachers in their own clinical teaching and as teachers of the Inspire Through Clinical Teaching course
  3. To foster a network of emerging medical educators

The course was developed by a group of anesthesia educators from Canada, UK, and South Africa and piloted for the first time in Lusaka, Zambia in 2016.  We have been growing ever since and now run courses in Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Guyana with plans to expand to Ethiopia and Canada.

In 2018 the World Federation of Societies of Anesthesiologists formally endorsed us and continues to support us.  Since 2019 in partnership with the Society of Anaesthesiologists of Zambia, Zambian physicians and nurses are now teaching Inspire Through Clinical Teaching in Lusaka and expanding to other centres in Zambia.  We have also received support from many other organizations and individuals.

This is a four-day reflective course that tries its best to practice what it preaches (or teaches)!  We follow best practices and use a variety educational methods in the delivery of course materials. There are five highly interactive workshops covering:

  1. lesson planning,
  2. small group teaching,
  3. large group teaching,
  4. clinical (bedside) teaching,
  5. simulation.

We use many different methods such as didactic presentations, large group discussions, small group break-out sessions, simulation, and individual work.  And on the last day everyone gets a chance to put into practice what they learnt during the week by teaching something to their peers.