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A staff development program for clinical teachers in medicine has been so popular that it has been expanded and rolled out to other health professionals.

Teaching on the Run, which was developed in 2001 by Professor of Medicine Fiona Lake, Dr Gerard Ryan, a respiratory physician at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, and others, has been acclaimed locally and nationally.

The program, which trains doctors to teach and supervise while working on the run, is used by many hospitals, community organisations and specialist colleges across Australia and has been delivered to more than 1000 clinicians and medical educators.

Following this success, Professor Lake was awarded an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Fellowship in 2006 to refine and implement the program for other health professions in specific disciplines and multidisciplinary groups. She worked on the expanded program with Dr Margaret Potter, Education Consultant in the School of Medicine and Pharmacology.

Because many professional groups face similar issues when trying to teach in a clinical work setting, the program was easily adapted to meet individual needs.

It has since been successfully delivered to groups of physiotherapists at Sir Charles Gairdner and Royal Perth Hospitals and staff from the Orthopaedic Physiotherapy Screening Clinic and Multidisciplinary Service at The Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. It has also been taken up by nurses in collaboration with staff development at Fremantle Hospital and multidisciplinary groups from Curtin University of Technology and the University of British Columbia.

Dr Potter said the exciting innovation was to run workshops for multidisciplinary groups.

“It is challenging because the groups have varying knowledge of their colleagues and each group has different needs,” she said. “In addition to providing participants with teaching skills, it encourages learning about, from and with colleagues, a central feature of multidisciplinary education.”

Professor Lake said it was a great opportunity to work with and learn from clinical teachers across the health professions and the widespread positive responses to the program were an indication of the strength of the content and delivery of Teaching on the Run.

The program was initially set up for hospital-based clinicians supervising junior doctors but now covers clinicians teaching students and specialist trainees and also embraces specialty areas such as dermatology and obstetrics and gynaecology, dental teachers, academic tutors and students as teachers.

If you are interested in more information about Teaching on the Run for health professionals, please contact Dr Margaret Potter at [email protected] .