It is widely accepted that a more engaged workforce Results in higher quality patient care. Education, particularly at junior doctor level, is a fantastic way to increase engagement.

All foundation doctors at The Royal Liverpool Hospital receive three hours of teaching every week from senior doctors on a range of topics. Consensus amongst peers was that teaching sessions often were not particularly relevant to the needs of junior doctors.

A peer-to-peer teaching scheme was launched for Foundation Year 1 (FY1) doctors in February 2018. A one-hour session dedicated to peer teaching was allocated once or twice a month within protected teaching time. Three speakers were assigned per session, each delivering a 15–20 minute presentation. Content was left to the discretion of the FY1 doctor presenting, and frequently centred around common on call scenarios.

13 FY1 doctors presented topics within the peer teaching programme in the remaining 6 months of the Foundation Year 1. An end-of-year evaluation survey showed that feedback of the scheme was largely similar to regular teaching sessions, with a higher overall rating.

Reflecting on our positive feedback, going forward we ensured that the programme continued to be offered to the FY1 doctors starting in August 2018, and expanded the programme to FY2 doctors.

Acting upon feedback, the presentation time was lengthened to 30 minutes for the FY2 programme in order to allow the speaker to explore their chosen topic in more depth. We also developed a teaching syllabus based on the core medical/surgical curriculum to encourage teaching tailored towards membership exams.

Compared to last year’s FY1 programme, we have seen an increase of nearly 40% in teaching participation this year with 18/54 FY2 doctors presenting topics.

We believe the positive uptake of the peer teaching programme reflects a positive engagement of junior doctors in their education, which we hope will carry through to their clinical work on the wards.