Attendance
MB ChB Attendance Guidance
This document describes how we manage and support students to demonstrate attendance on the MBChB course. As medical students studying for a professional qualification you are expected to display particular professional attributes, and managing your attendance and absence professionally is fundamental to this. The contents of this document are consistent with University-wide attendance policy[1] and the requirements of the GMC[2].
Key messages:
- You are expected to attend and engage with all provided compulsory educational opportunities.
- We expect you to consider attendance at Medical School as being akin to attendance at a job.
- We do understand that sometimes you will be unable to attend. We do not wish for you to miss important appointments or to attend teaching sessions while unfit to do so.
- If you do miss a teaching session, we expect you to promptly notify WMS using the absence form process and to make up for the missed learning opportunity.
1. Why do we monitor attendance?
As educators in a medical school, we have multiple responsibilities to you and others. We have responsibilities to maintain high academic and professional standards so that we produce excellent doctors who do not compromise patient safety. We also have responsibilities to support you through the various challenges that you may face on your way to becoming excellent doctors. Our approach to attendance is supportive rather than punitive. We aim to support you to develop appropriate attitudes towards professionalism and managing your health, and to equip you with the good habits to succeed in your studies and future medical careers. We need to be aware of when you are absent to ensure that you receive any academic or pastoral support that is needed. For these reasons we routinely monitor attendance and issue clear guidance on what you should do if you are unable to attend sessions.
2. Expectations
We expect you to attend and engage with all educational activities provided, including face-to-face and online lecture-style sessions, Case Based Learning and group work at the WMS sites and clinical learning opportunities, tutorials and workshops within the clinical settings.
As well as passing your exams, you are required to meet engagement criteria throughout the course. Satisfactory attendance is one of these criteria. We understand that you may require time off for personal or health-related reasons, and that this will mean that 100% attendance may not be possible for you. Each student’s circumstances will be considered on an individual basis and if necessary an education plan may be introduced to ensure you have caught up with missed material.
The Course Progress Group (CPG) will monitor attendance and engagement throughout the course to identify students who may be experiencing problems or where students have missed considerable learning which could potentially affect their ability to complete their studies successfully.
Students with low levels of attendance may not be permitted to progress on the course if it is considered not possible to catch up with missed learning.
3. What to do if you are unable to attend
If you are too ill to attend a teaching session then you should not attend. If you have important medical appointments or another significant personal commitment then you may wish to prioritise these over attending. We understand that you all have your own lives and that sometimes things may occur that make it difficult or impossible for you to attend. It is important, however, that you respond to these situations professionally. We encourage you to view absence from the course as being akin to absence from a job. Just as you would notify an employer if you were unable to work on a given day, medical students should be notifying the medical school about absences in a timely manner.
When you are absent, you should notify WMS that you are unable to attend teaching sessions as soon as you become aware of the absence. You should send notification to the phase admin team and, if you are in a placement, you should notify your placement coordinator as well.
Email addresses for each phase admin teams:
· Phase 1 admin team: MBChBPhase1@warwick.ac.uk
· Phase 2 admin team: MBChBPhase2@warwick.ac.uk
· Phase 3 admin team: MBChBPhase3@warwick.ac.uk
Contact details for your placement coordinators are available on your phase Moodle page.
In addition to notifying us at the time of your absence, you will also need to complete an absence form within 48 hours of your return to the course. Every absence should therefore be notified within 48 hours of your return, using the online form on Moodle.
You can self-certify sickness absence for up to seven days, except where the absence is at the time of a significant assessment (e.g. examinations). A doctor’s note/medical certificate is required for absences of longer than seven days and for examination purposes.
When submitting your absence form, you will receive an email thanking you for letting us know and directing you to student support if needed. If any major concerns are highlighted about overall engagement you may be asked to meet with the Phase Lead or another member of the academic team. If any concerns are highlighted relating to health or wellbeing you may be asked to see student support. The intention of either of these meetings would be to help you with any difficulties you may be having, as well as helping to ensure you are able to present sufficient evidence to demonstrate engagement.
4. What will happen if you do not notify us
If, at the end of a Block you have unnotified absences covering two or more days (even if these are consecutive), or you have repeatedly submitted absence forms late, you will receive a warning from the Phase Lead and a Low Level Professionalism[3] concern will be raised. If you receive two such warnings from the Phase Lead during the course we will notify the Health, Welfare and Professionalism[4] group. This will provide an opportunity for any issues to be explored further and appropriate support to be offered.
5. Remediation
If you miss a teaching session you are expected to find ways to make up for the missed learning. Staff may be willing to assist with this, but the ultimate responsibility will lie with you. You should not expect additional teaching to be provided. Making up for missed learning opportunities may be more straight-forward for some sessions than for others. We will provide some generic guidance of what adequate catching-up might look like, and the relevant Theme/Block/Phase Leads will be able to advise on what appropriate remediation for their sessions will look like.
The requirement to make up for missed learning opportunities applies whether you have missed a single session or a week of sessions. In the case of a single session you can explain this in the absence form. In the case of an extended absence or more frequent absences, you may be asked to meet with the Block Lead, Phase Lead or another member of the academic team, to create a remediation plan. This meeting is not disciplinary, and is instead intended to support you.
There are no shortcuts to remediation. If you miss a week of teaching sessions, it is reasonable to expect this to take a week to fully catch up on, and this may need to be undertaken alongside ongoing teaching. If many learning opportunities are missed then consideration will be given to whether it is practically possible to remediate for an extended absence. It may be necessary to take a temporary withdrawal from the course and return in future.
If you do not remediate sufficiently for any absences then you may not be permitted to progress to the next stage of the course.
6. Planned or Extended absence
When considering a period of absence please ensure that you minimise the time away from the course and the impact on your learning. As part of your planning for an expected absence, you should complete an absence form on Moodle in advance, with as much notice as you can provide.
When submitting the absence form, you should provide a plan outlining how missed learning opportunities will be addressed. Reasons for planned absence may include family events, conference attendance or personal wellbeing. In Phase II and Phase III, you should provide a minimum of 6 weeks’ notice for a planned absence, please refer to the Phase Moodle pages for full details.
Sometimes due to health or personal reasons, longer or more frequent absences may be necessary. If this is the case for you, we encourage you to speak to your (clinical) personal tutor, Deputy Senior Tutor or a member of the phase academic team, so that we can explore how best to support you.
7. The data that we will use
We will record attendance at many different types of session. This may be done electronically using swipe cards, by logging attendance/engagement online, or using paper-based registers. It is your responsibility to ensure that your attendance is recorded at sessions, and it is this data that is primarily used to measure your attendance. Students can view their attendance at WMS-based sessions on their record via Tabula. Attendance in clinical placements is monitored through a variety of methods, and will include students recording and logging their activities to provide evidence of attendance and engagement.
We do also have access to other data. This includes analytic data from Moodle, Echo360 and LT, for examples. This can tell us with a high level of detail what resources you have accessed, how long you have accessed them for, and which LT workbooks you have completed. We do not use this data to calculate ‘attendance’ because there are various ways in which it may not be completely accurate. We may, however, use it to gain an overall picture of a student’s level of engagement with the course and we may wish to discuss it with you during any meetings about attendance and engagement.
8. Further Questions?
If you have any further questions about attendance, please contact the relevant phase team:
Phase 1 Lead, Greg Moorlock or MBChBPhase1@warwick.ac.uk
Phase 2 Lead, Lanre Sorinola or MBChBPhase2@warwick.ac.uk
Phase 3 Lead, Paul de Cates or MBChBPhase3@warwick.ac.uk
