About the Irish EACH network

About the Irish EACH network Two years ago, in May 2014, we began by emailing individuals in our own organization, plus anyone outside of the organization who we knew, to see whether they would like to meet up and discuss what might be the objectives of a network of individuals interested in research and teaching communication skills in healthcare. Twelve individuals from very different backgrounds came to the meeting. We identified a number of needs such as a need for teaching resources, a need to meet each other and a need for training. We agreed that we should launch the itEACH network at the next Scientific meeting of the Irish Network of Medical Educators (INMED) which was to be held in Limerick in February 2015. We also agreed to host a stand at a national patient safety conference in November of that year in order to try to catch interested individuals from a wider perspective than just teachers in one medical education centre. We were delighted to collect 30 names at this conference. From there we invited Dr Jonathan Silverman to come to Ireland to run a one day pre-conference workshop at the INMED meeting in February 2015 and also to deliver a keynote at the meeting. We also convened another get together at the conference of interested individuals to explore perceived needs. Attendees at the pre-conference workshop got one year membership of EACH and so this was a great way of introducing these individuals to the organization. There was so much interest and such great feedback from these events in Limerick that our next networking activity was to organize a two day training workshop in May 2016 entitled ‘ What to Teach’. This was offered to our contact list at a reduced rate and 17 individuals representing a wide range of health professionals attended. The workshop was given by Dr Paul Kinnersley, University of Cardiff and was a fantastic two days. Our last two and most recent activities was a meeting held in University College Dublin in September 2016 where once again we came together to discuss perceived needs. Eva Doherty also gave a short presentation on the literature on the assessment of communication skills. Finally Gozie Offiah and Eva Doherty (wo)manned a stand at a conference held for junior doctors by the Medical Protection Society. Many of the topics presented at this day focused on effective communication. For the future we plan to hold an itEACH symposium at the next INMED Scientific meeting to be held at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in February 2017. Presentations will be invited on a range of topics both relevant to teaching and research and there will be a prize for the best presentation sponsored by our friends, the Medical Protection Society. In summary we are delighted with how itEACH has progressed and we now have 75 interested individuals on our contact list. INMED has kindly given us a page on their website and we are working on populating that. We look forward to welcoming members of the EACH steering committee next year in April 2017 and also to hosting two tEACH courses in April 2017. The next biannual tEACH meeting will be held in Dublin also in April 2017 and we are greatly looking forward to showing our tEACH friends the delights of our Emerald Isle!

Gozie Offiah (teach Network subgroup) and Eva Doherty (teach Video subgroup) in front of the EACH stand at a recent one day conference in Dublin convened by the Medical Protection Society ‘Spotlight on Risk’

We think that our success in getting the Irish network going has had to do with making sure that we take all opportunities to reach out to interested individuals by hosting stands at national conferences and then ensuring that we find out what the perceived needs are and responding to them as soon as possible once these needs have been identified. We look forward to the continuing growth of our itEACH network! Eva Doherty Director of Human Factors in Patient Safety, Department of Surgical Affairs, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland