I will have to apologise to The Boss himself, Mr Bruce Springsteen, in person for the hijacking of his song lyric, if our paths ever cross in the future. However, the sentiment is true and will definitely need a spot of contextualising in this forum.
As Darzi Fellows, we are privileged to be able to have some structured teaching in our time away from or previous roles and responsibilities and this takes the form of regular workshops at London South Bank University under the tutelage of Becky Malby and Murray Anderson-Wallace (among a cast of many more). These workshops are intensive immersion in subjects related to the fellowship and, for those of us who might have been out of the formal academic world for a number of years, can be a bit more intense than perhaps anticipated.
A format that was suggested to us was using the creative programme, Adobe SPARK, to bring together thoughts, images, sentiments, quotes, etc. from each workshop when we are all together. The pages are brought together by two volunteer Fellows and then disseminated among the cohort for feedback before ‘publishing’. These are then visible to sponsors, colleagues, employers and, as they are free access pages, anyone else interested in the content of the teaching element of the Darzi Fellowship. One caveat is that it is the content is generated by the Fellows and is our interpretation and reflection on the time spent in the workshops. However, the process is democratic and inclusive, so gives, as far as we can tell, a representative view of the group experience.
Having put together the SPARK page for the second workshop, our first on ‘Core Concepts of Quality’, Daniel Dodd (Paramedic, Darzi Fellow and all round good guy) and I put authored the following report. You can read the Workshop 2 page here.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the process was the ability to reflect upon absolutely every point of the workshop process in a collaborative manner. Ours also had the interesting addition of the first day being off site carrying out an ‘organisational raid’, a process none of the cohort had experienced before.
The other excellent workshop SPARK pages were created by Mark Gregson and Helene McCarthy (Workshop 1) and Shirmilla Datta and Jen Palfrey (Workshop 3). I’m sure I will post the others as we progress throughout the year.
So, in closing, these useful pages are an aide memoire for us, a useful insight for our sponsors (hopefully) as to the time we spend at London South Bank University and possibly also a spark of interest to those who might consider applying for future programmes; be they in London, KSS (Kent, Surrey & Sussex) or perhaps even further afield should they catch on in a wider NHS context.
Stu Yeomans 