Saturday morning: first parallel session: Clinical Academies

After an another agreeable evening at the Art Gallery, the first morning session of the final day was on Clinical Academies, a new initiative in the West Country. My account will not be entirely objective as I was chairing the session. I also presented Vicky Sergeant with her iPod, which she won as first prize in the HLG draw.
The paper was a joint presentation by Barry Howarth, Academy Manager and Sharon Hadley, Effective Practice Facilitator. There's a network of academies in that part of the world, in Bath, North Bristol, Gloucester, Swindon, Taunton and the one Barry and Sharon work at, in Weston-super-Mare. Each takes fifty to sixty medical students from the University of Bristol, and around a hundred nursing students from the University of the West Of England, as well as other health professions. Barry spoke on the structure and planning of the academy, while Sharon talked about library implications. They're in the process of building an electronic learning environment, the virtual academy. The audience were interested in how they managed the interface between higher education and NHS networks, and it seems they use a Citrix thin client, just as we do at BSMS.