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.