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A day in the life of Steve Platt

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Year 3 MICA and year 6 GPSA Administrator

My alarm goes at 06.45 and by 07.30 I’m out the door to Sutton station.  
 If I’m coming into our base offices at Charing Cross Hospital I’ll normally come in via Wimbledon but sometimes on a Thursday morning I will need to get to South Kensington so will route via Victoria.  After a successful pilot the year 3 MICA course now has 50 students per ten week rotation.  At the weekly central teaching they cover topics such as clinical complexity or data interpretation.   I will set up the rooms and deliver any teaching materials and it’s an opportunity for the students to see me and sort out any outstanding administration.  For example, this week they were signing an indemnity disclaimer before their 12 hour shift with the London Ambulance Service as one of the clinical experience sessions.  The first student had been out the night before and despite having had to be at the ambulance base for 06.00 was full of enthusiastic stories of helping an old lady who had fallen and was lying on the floor at home.  On all rotations, central teaching is important for fostering peer support, friendships and allows effective education techniques such as team learning and problem based learning to be used. 


Generally I’m the first port of call for the students with any problems with attachments, coursework or attendance at central teaching.  I liaise with the faculty of medicine and learning technology team to ensure students get the right information about upcoming attachments, and their coursework submissions are in time.  I’ve also been called in to be a patient in exams! 


I always get out for lunch which will be homemade cheese or egg or ham sandwiches for a walk down the river or errands in Hammersmith.  An important part of my job is allocating students to practices.  For the year 3 MICA  we use the student’s postcode so they are as near to their surgeries as possible.  From February to May I sort out 300 final year GPSA student placements.  About 20%of students organise their own and the students rank their top five choices of those offered by Imperial.  As with all new training placements, the practice and the lead trainer needs to undergo a brief quality assurance assessment before students are placed there.


As I’m in by 08.30 I leave soon after 16.30 so I get a seat on the train.  At the moment I’m training twice a week in the evening for the ten mile Great South Run raising money for MIND.  My sister had mental health issues as a teenager.  She’s well now but I’m happy to support others who may be having a difficult time.  My target is to go under 1h 35 mins - last year’s time.  I also do the weekly Parkrun at Nonsuch, Cheam which not many people know had a palace built by Henry VIII that was bigger than Hampton Court.

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