Education/Clinical Supervisors

Definition

Each trainee should have a named ES who is responsible for overseeing that trainee’s educational progress over a period of time.

The GMC defines an ES as:

“A trainer who is selected and appropriately trained to be responsible for the overall supervision and management of a specified trainee’s educational progress during a clinical training placement or series of placements. The Educational Supervisor is responsible for the trainee's Educational Agreement.”

The ES role is to help the student or trainee to plan their training and achieve agreed learning outcomes. S/he is responsible for the educational agreement and for bringing together all relevant evidence to form a summative judgement at the end of the clinical training placement and/or series of placements.

Some training schemes appoint an ES for each training placement. The roles of CS and ES may then be merged. These individuals will require a higher level of educational development for their role than a CS which will usually be significantly more demanding.

In many instances the same person may undertake both CS and ES roles for a given trainee. However, in specialty training (including GP trainees in secondary care attachments) some doctors may act as ES for more than one trainee and receive feedback on trainee performance from multiple CS. Some doctors may act as CS only.

Roles and Responsibilities of an Educational Supervisor

This is a complex role which spans the areas of educational management, educational supervision and feedback, an understanding of the role of assessment in learning, the use of portfolios as a learning and assessment tool, an understanding of how to identify, support and manage a trainee in difficulty, and of supporting trainee career decision making. It also requires an understanding of the role of the CS and how to link with that individual in situations where the 2 roles are separated. The standards for trainers are met in the outline of roles and responsibilities of an ES given below.

eRota - Educational Supervisor Exception Reporting - https://vimeo.com/552823897/f4977dca77