Roles and Responsibilities of an Educational Supervisor
Educational supervisors are responsible for supporting, guiding and monitoring the progress of a named trainee for a specified period of time. The ES-trainee role is pivotal and central to a trainee’s success, and when done well represents a profoundly reassuring and ‘critical friend’ for a trainee as they navigate the sometimes tricky landscape of medical training.
Educational supervisors have responsibilities as set out in the Medical Education Leaders UK job description ‘Educational Supervisor’ (see link below).
All ESs should have adequate time in their job plans to fulfil their roles which is 0.25PA per trainee, to a maximum of 1PA in total for ES and named CS roles.
Educational Supervisor – Appraisal Requirements
The KSS process for recognition and re-recognition of educational supervisors in secondary care sets out exactly what the requirements are both for becoming an ES and then for satisfying appraisal requirements for remaining in the role (see link below).
Recognition as an educational supervisor
Before starting as a named ES you should:
1. Ensure that you have the generic professional competences required by your royal college to do this role. With the new curricula across all royal colleges now coming into practice, all doctors wishing to achieve CCT or CESR will need to demonstrate the generic professional competences required to act as an ES so all new consultants will have done this. SAS doctors wishing to be ESs will need to check the relevant royal college curriculum for their specialty and discuss with the local LFG lead whether there is any specific extra training required before they can do the ES training course.
2. Check local processes for accessing ES training available in your Trust and apply for it with your college tutor
3. Read the KSS guidance on ES recognition available on this website
4. Consider whether you will be supervising GP trainees or foundation doctors as an ES in secondary care: if so please look through the educator training resource and complete those modules relevant to your trainee’s educational needs.
5. Access the Educator Training Resources at www.e-lfh.org.uk – they are all excellent but as a minimum you should complete those on supervision, assessing educational needs, setting learning objectives, effective feedback and supporting learners, plus modules from part 3 of this resource as you feel appropriate to you and your trainee.
6. Ensure you are up to date with your E+D training (also available on e-lfh) which needs to be completed every 3 years.
Appraisal Requirements for Educational Supervisors
1. You should read this advice in conjunction with any published guidance that your Trust has on this subject. The Deanery guidance and suggestions is available on this website.
2. Your role as ES should be discussed at each annual appraisal as part of your scope of work and should have protected time in your job plan.
3. Every 5 year revalidation cycle you need to demonstrate that you have undertaken CPD that covers domains 1-4 and 7 of the GMC standards for trainers as set out in the HEE Framework for Educators document 2022 (available at https://london.hee.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/professional_development_framework_for_educators_2022.pdf ). Your Trust appraisal documentation may have suggestions embedded as to what CPD can be considered for each domain but this information is also available on page 17 of the professional development framework for educators. CS update training opportunities are available via your Trust, School or royal college as well. We have not set a minimum amount of CPD, but you should consider what is necessary for you to remain up to date in this role. There is also a free tool, the educator MSF, available for you to seek feedback in your role – please click on the link available on the Tier 3 homepage.
4. You should remain up to date with your equality and diversity training which is available via your Trust or the e-lfh website.
Please note if you do not update and provide this evidence to your organisation, you should not act as an educational supervisor.
Proposal for Appraisals – Oct 2024
Appraisal of Educational Supervisors Proposal
All doctors who have educational and clinical supervision roles should have that role assessed as part of their annual appraisal. There are national guidelines around this, taken originally from the Health Education England guidance (as was):
“You will need to demonstrate your competence, and demonstrate how you will remain up to date. You will need to provide evidence against all of the GMC standards in your appraisal to demonstrate high quality effective supervision. HEE has recommended that 0.25PAs of time are needed per trainee.
Roles and Responsibilities
The educational supervisor is required to offer support, guidance and feedback to the candidate whilst they undertake the practice activities and assessment period and facilitate the local implementation of work schemes in the workplace.”
Trusts have assessed this in different ways, usually combining this assessment as part of the doctors’ annual appraisal process, which covers all their areas of work. Often, evidence requested includes the original induction into the role, any training undertaken in the last 12 months and the number of hours involved in training. However, specific updates and training are not indicated.
In running the ARCP process, it is clear that being part of an ARCP panel is extremely useful in updating trainers about the requirements of their role and what is expected of their trainees. The criteria for a successful ARCP outcome change as processes evolve and there are often subtle changes that educational supervisors have not been aware of. Furthermore, the ARCP panel is an opportunity to see how other supervisors complete their reports and a method of sharing good practice. In our experience the ARCP is the most effective way of keeping educational supervisors up to date and apprised of their role.
We propose making attendance at ARCP a mandatory requirement for educator appraisal, which would support the ARCP panels but more importantly, keep educators refreshed and up to date with their essential role. This would not require annual ARCP attendance, but we propose:
- Attendance as a member of an ARCP panel within the first two years of becoming an educational supervisor.
- Attending an ARCP once every 5-year revalidation cycle, as a minimum, as evidence of maintaining knowledge and understanding for the role. Attending every year would be beneficial but a minimum of once every revalidation cycle.
- Involvement within IMT and/or HST recruitment panels once every 5-year revalidation cycle, as a minimum.
- Attendance at Educational/Clinical supervisor update sessions (regionally/nationally) as needed in order refresh on changes within curriculum and/or supervisory requirements
We propose that this becomes mandatory at each Trust (LEP) and is supported by the Directors of Medical Education and Clinical Tutor within each Trust with acceptance by the Responsible Officer that this should be part of the local appraisal process.