Thanks to the outstanding work of Nick Ohrn (a truly expert WordPress developer) we now have a working feedback questionnaire which on completion generates an attendance certificate for the candidates.

I’ll go into more detail about how it works at the AGM March 2, Leeds.

Leeds General Infirmary, Great George Street, LS1 3EX.

Program commences 09:30.

MEPA Agenda Leeds 2012

 Once you get there:

By Car: Parking in the hospital car park is very limited. Try the Woodhouse Lane Car Park, others include: the Light, the Rose Bowl (expensive) and the Merrion Centre.

By train: 15 minute walk from Leeds station, there’s a Citybus leaving every few minutes to the hospital £0.50.

Accommodation

Hotels:

Queens Hotel (faded grandeur) nearest to the station.

Chains: Novotel, Discovery Inn, Crowne Plaza, Marriot, Travelodge Leeds Central and Vicars Lane.

Ibis and Express by Holiday Inn are slightly further away.

The reason for this is partly for security and also to aid development of the long awaited user feedback – certificate of attendance generation.

If you are a paediatric anaesthetist interested in setting up a MEPA course and don’t know anyone in the MEPA community either contact the nearest centre (see list) or email me.

Thanks,

Matt

Please meet outside the Plenary Room (IPSS business meeting venue), it will be held in a room nearby.

Newcastle

Venue: The Simulation Centre, Freeman Hospital Newcastle:

High Heaton,Newcastle upon Tyne,NE7 7DN

[Login, then return here to access the agenda, Bristol minutes and expenses claim form via the links below!]

Tobias Everett presented our research-in-progress abstract at the International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare in New Orleans, Louisiana, this week. Pictured is Toby with Elaine Ng of Toronto SickKids, the pilot site where data collection is already well underway. We held a productive research meeting with the Canadian faculty members present on Tuesday and I will update you with progress at the annual MEPA meeting next week by teleconference.

Dylan Bould

Issues discussed included the issue of copyrighting the intellectual property which makes up MEPA, the expansion of the MEPA program into North America and the importance of potential new centres signing up to the MEPA charter. Requests: More Bio-profiles for Faculty members and more site info to be added to the mepa website please. Maps of MEPA centres to be added also.

The MEPA mission statement and charter can now be found on the site.

A lot was achieved in a relatively short space of time.

INVITATION: Let’s hold these skype conferences monthly – all interested faculty members very welcome!

We had a great meeting at the IPSS in Madrid.

We’re planning to pilot a MEPA for consultants with occasional paediatric practice in London Friday December 3rd at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

If you can make it please let Alison Cloote know.

The IPSS (International Paediatric Simulation Society) is now truly up and running and should prove very useful as a collaborative resource.

Faculty members please forward to me a brief (2 – 3 sentences max) bio about yourselves that you would be happy to put on the MEPA site. It’ll help make the site more useful. Interests, Location, etc most useful and photo if you dare!

Thanks,

Matt

Could all sites involved contact me at dylan@mepa.stipa.org.uk regarding research ethics board applications.

Data collection has started at the SickKids pilot site.

Thanks, Dylan

The outstanding issue that we need your help with before we start collecting data is the finalization of the criteria for the arrival of help during the scenarios. Although this is not usually standardized between centers for the MEPA course it is vital that it is for data collection in the Evaluating Performance in MEPA Simulations study to prevent bias when evaluating individual’s performances. If you have 30 minutes or so, please download the file “criteria for the arrival of help 1.4.docx” from the SickKids pilot subsection which contains more information and the draft criteria for the arrival of help.

Please email comments to me at dylan@mepa.stipa.org.uk.

The main, multi-center part of the study is still in final processes of peer-review of the protocol. You can download the latest version from the Evaluating Performance in MEPA Simulations subsection in the side bar on the right of this page (requires faculty log in). All comments are welcome and I will be contacting individual centers regarding local Research Ethics Board applications and readiness to start data collection over the coming weeks.

Dylan