Most medical educationalists will choke on their tea when they read this, but I don't care. I don't like e-portfolio. There I said it. I don't care how unpolitically correct it is to say that, or how much I should love the learning points it highlights. I simply detest it.
It would be a bit juvenile of me to just say that and not back it up. Although I pretty much only watch cartoons and enjoy being a giant child I think now is probably the time to grow up a little and justify what I say.
Basically I think e-portfolio is a good idea, but it will never work. I like the idea of logging experiences and charting progression but it's just so difficult. It's just seen as a hoop to jump through so people don't do it properly. For a start half the people I ask to do things for me are computer illiterate. This makes getting eportfolio sign ups such a drag. Then once you've found someone who isn't a complete technophobe, they're too busy to fill out forms.
I think it would work better if there was just a way for us to log the skills we've learnt and the cases we've seen. Surely as doctors we should be trusted not to lie about it? You'd also think that we could be trusted to gain verbal feedback.
Then there is reflection. I reflect a lot mentally. I also reflect a lot verbally. I even sometimes reflect on my blog. This all doesn't stop me feeling like a complete pleb when I know my educational supervisor will be reading back my reflections.
Anyway our e-portfolios are all being reviewed this week so I'm going to spend the better part of this week chasing things for people to put on my e-portfolio, as if we weren't all busy enough with bronchiolitis season, a million viral induced wheezes, a strangely large number of HSP patients and numerous kids with pyrexia of unknown origin. ARGH!
If you haven't already realised I'm a natural worrier, and I really let things like e-portfolio stress me out. Was the same with university log books. Blergh.
Dr Sunshine xXx
Medical educationalists may choke, and can for all I care, but most clinicians agree with you. And with revalidation coming we are all going to have to go through this worthless exercise. We are going to have to explain ourselves like naughty boys because no patient has sent us a thank you card. If it helps, next time one of these arseholes tells you how important it is just remember (s)he never himself had to do it, when he was in training.
ReplyDeleteAt least med school logbooks were signature only.. we recently got an email saying that because of the poor response to eportfolio in clinical year 1 (nobody used it, even the office! they told us to submit things online and then print it off and travel allthe way to hand them in!), they decided to retain paper-based log books for clinical year 2/3. This means much less "reflection" required and it's all structured anyway which makes it easier.
ReplyDeleteAnyway since we are not getting whitespace questions for F1 apps anymore, there's less need to keep reflective writing to prove ourselves - I hope