MMedEd student profile: Alex

Emergency medicine trainee Alex is currently in the diploma year of the MMedEd course at Warwick Medical School. Drawn by a desire to improve how teaching is delivered in clinical settings, she shares how the course has helped her develop as an educator, explore new approaches like technology-enhanced learning, and tailor her teaching to better support adult learners.

Why did you decide to study MMedEd at Warwick Medical School?

I'm an emergency medicine trainee. A few years ago, I worked as a teaching fellow at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire and as part of that, they gave us an introduction into teaching via the PG Certificate in Medical Education. I found it really interesting. I'm interested in teaching anyway but had never learnt the underpinning theories around teaching, so that was a real eye-opener for me.

A few years later I decided I’d like to progress a bit further with my teaching and learn a bit more about educational theory and practice. I wanted to try and make some of our teaching sessions more up to date and more accessible. This second year of the MMedEd course (the PG Diploma) seemed like a good opportunity to get back into it.

How have you found the course and what have the highlights been?

Really good, really interesting. It’s tiring trying to do it alongside work as well - it’s been a bit of a juggling act. Overall though it’s been really good to build on the foundations of the first year and go a bit further.

I particularly liked the Technology Enhanced Learning module. Since the pandemic I’ve been on both the teaching and learning sides of online teaching and haven’t always found it very engaging, so it was great to learn some new ways to use technology effectively and to now be able to try these ideas out in my own teaching.

How do you feel the course is benefiting your career?

Knowing what's out there and learning how to structure a teaching session is so helpful. I feel more aware of how different learners engage, and have learnt ways to get the same point across in different ways so that people can actually take what they want from teaching in the best way that works for them. That’s probably my key learning point - working with adult learners and learning how to teach them as individuals, rather than just following standard protocol from how it’s been before.