MEDEV

School of Medical Sciences Education Development

Moan, moan, moan. Complaints from students; opportunity, threat, or just a pain in the neck?

Date: 1 day event - 30 Oct 2008

Aims

To explore how we can utilise complaints from students to improve the quality of the teaching they receive and how can we best respond to the thorny ethical issues which are raised by students in clinical practice.
To share complaints procedures between schools learn from each others complaints and disseminate the lessons learned.

Activities

1. Share the complaints procedure in the community based teaching modules at the University of Manchester
2. Share own (and all participants) experience of difficult individual complaints and how they have been dealt with

This will be approached through small group work sharing difficult complaints which participants have had to deal with, both about clinicians and about students.

3. Use individual anonymised case discussion to explore some of the difficult ethical issues which are raised by students. Participants will be asked to bring along their most difficult case to date.
Through
Discussion of individual cases with experienced ethicists acting as resources within a facilitated group setting. (clear ground rules around confidentiality will be set.)

Proposed outcomes

By the end of the workshop participants will be able to:

Evaluate complaints within an ethical framework
Understand how complaints can be used to improve the quality of clinical placements.
Describe current complaints systems in place in different universities and disciplines
Develop complaints resolution systems using the models demonstrated within disciplines and faculties where these do not already exist.
Share difficult cases and gain the perspective of other educators on the complaints which they currently or previously have faced.

Facilitators & Speakers

• Philip Burns - Facilitator

Facilitator background

Dr Burns has extensive experience as small group facilitator and has organised and delivered a multitude of plenary, conference and development days.
He has also been closely involved in undergraduate and postgraduate education since 1995 and developed and implemented the complaints procedure in the community based teaching modules at the University of Manchester.
Within the team there is wide experience of dealing with a range of complaints which have been raised by students over many years.

Target audience

Staff who are involved in dealing with complaints from students and who wish to explore how to deal with them.

Venue & Location

Resources

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