What is enhance?

The Future Doctor Report highlighted the need for a greater proportion of doctors and all other healthcare professionals to have generalist skills.  

The Enhancing Generalist Skills programme aims to support doctors to work effectively, flexibly and confidently within our dynamic healthcare landscape. This includes using a whole-person approach to healthcare, advocating for social justice and seeking new ways to reduce health inequalities. 

Thinking Together programme 

The London enhance Programme Team is running a programme of free, in-person events to support London medical trainees from all specialities, nurses, pharmacists, allied healthcare professionals and the wider workforce to:

• develop generalist skills
• share best practice
• improve patient care, reduce health inequalities and enhance the patient journey. 

The programme consists of four, full-day workshops which promote and encourage generalist skills, based on recommendations made in HEE’s Future Doctor report, and lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each session focuses on a separate element of the curriculum. Attending all 4 sessions will enhance your generalist knowledge and skills, aiming to reduce health inequalities, improve patient care and help us find meaning in our work.

Programme participants will have the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from different disciplines and to hear from patients with lived experience.

Quality Improvement

You will be encouraged to undertake a local quality improvement project, based upon topics covered in the programme. Support will be available from an experienced researcher and there will be opportunities for presentation of your project.

As part of the London Enhancing Generalist Skills Programme (enhance), Dr Becky Appleton, Research Fellow at University College London, introduces us to quality improvement (QI) research and how you can incorporate QI into your work.

Forthcoming events

Part 1: Thinking Together Day 1 – Person-centred approaches to healthcare

• Introduction and professionalism within healthcare
• Discussions with people with lived experience of healthcare, with an emphasis upon clinical encounters
• Introduction to narrative medicine
• Interactive exercises with a theatre company that works with people with lived experience, focusing on self-reflection and considering patients as people, and their stories

 Part 2: Thinking Together Day 2 – Communicating between teams and integrating care

• Group discussion regarding health inequalities and how health service design and the ways in which we work can cause barriers and facilitators for health
• Interactive discussion with a person with lived experience regarding use of the health services as a patient, who is now involved in co-design and co-production of health services
• A focus on community engagement and empowerment
• Introduction to quality improvement (QI) projects with an experienced researcher – programme attendees will have the opportunity to undertake a multi-disciplinary Quality Improvement Project (QIP) with other attendees (ongoing support for these projects will be available through the programme)
• Networking opportunities

Upcoming course dates	Venue
Thinking Together Day 1: 29 Jan 2025	Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
Thinking Together Day 2: 26 Feb 2025	Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

 

Part 3: ‘Human Dimension and Technology’ workshop

Digital healthcare technologies (patient apps, triage platforms and artificial intelligence) are having an ever-increasing effect on our work and lives as clinicians.

This workshop is open to trainees from all specialties, and we consider: 

• the role of the doctor and the role of technology in our clinical work.
• ethical dilemmas which arise from the use of technology.
• future horizons within technology.

Upcoming course dates	Venue
05 Nov 2024	St George’s, University of London
11 Mar 2025	Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

 

Part 4: ‘Flourishing in Healthcare’ workshop

This workshop focuses upon the role of clinicians within healthcare, with a particular emphasis upon clinicians as people, empowerment and flourishing within medicine.

We consider:

• barriers and facilitators to meaning-making, connection, humanity, and emotion at work
• how we make meaning from our work, and how we can flourish
• an introduction to creative enquiry, with simple, practical creative exercises to reflect and express ourselves.

Upcoming course dates	Venue
19 Nov 2024	St George’s, University of London
26 Mar 2025	Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

 

How to book your Thinking Together place

We encourage participants to attend the full programme. However, please email the London enhance Programme Team to book your place. If you are interested but can only attend certain workshops, we will consider this on a case-by-case basis.

Contact us 

If you have any questions about the London enhance trailblazer pilot or would like more information regarding our workshops, please email: england.enhance.london@nhs.net 

London enhance celebration event – dates to be confirmed

This enhance celebration event is open to all London medical trainees, nurses, pharmacists, and allied healthcare professionals, irrespective of whether you have attended London enhance programme sessions previously. Spaces are available on a first-come-first-served basis.

This event will: 

• feature interactive workshops, looking at themes of health inequalities, evidence-based medicine, ethics of poverty medicine, population health and patient-centred care
• incorporate trainee quality improvement presentations
• offer reflections of the enhance programme, including creative enquiry.  

Resources

1. Hospitals Without Walls: Systems (20 minutes): In this video, Martin Griffiths and Roisin Keville explain how they have aimed to create a hospital without walls and have transformed the ethos of the Royal London Trauma Service, improving outcomes and lowering re-admission rates.
2. Hospitals Without Walls: People (16 minutes 57): In this video, Martin Griffiths and Roisin Keville focus on the human dimension of care and the personal values and attributes that contribute to creating a connected moral service model.

Martin Griffiths CBE, is Lead Trauma Surgeon at The Royal London Hospital and Clinical Director for Violence Reduction for London and NHS England. Roisin Keville is MTC and ED Service Manager at St Giles Trust and Founding Case Worker, Trauma Services at The Royal London Hospital.

Thinking Together podcast series  

You can listen to our three-part podcast series which feature patients who have been through GP and mental health services. They are designed to help trainees reflect on their role within the system and to consider why some patients are poorly served by healthcare.   

1. Thinking Together episode one: The Experience of Mental Illness: in this episode, we meet Izzy and Valentina, who describe their experience of mental ill health and healing.  
2. Thinking Together episode two: The Pros and Cons of Psychiatric Diagnosis and Medication: Dr Rupal Shah continues the conversation with Izzy and Valentina who debate the gains and losses of being given a mental health diagnosis and medication.  
3. Thinking Together episode three: Epistemic Injustice: in the final episode of this series, Izzy and Valentina discuss the importance of being heard by medical professionals and of having their stories listened to.