Annual Day of Celebration

GP SPT3 2020 Cohort – #CovidStories 

“Stories are the oldest and most natural thing that we do. They help us make sense of the world and give our world meaning. In these challenging times we need to have tools that allow us to make sense and to create meaning that will permit us to re-centre and to once again celebrate and learn. These are the #CovidStories of GP ST3 Trainees of 2020”

For the last three years we have run a “Day of Celebration” event in June for GP ST3s to show-case the Quality Improvement work they have done during the year in their Training Practices under the EQUIP Programme, and to consider how their GP careers might look. There has always been a buzz about the day – a real day of celebration.

EQUIP was paused at the onset of the Lockdown. Despite the sense of collective dis-orientation from Covid-19 we rightly felt there was still much to celebrate and the GP Trainee Cohort of 2020 deserved to be celebrated and to celebrate as much as any previous trainees; perhaps more.

We asked Trainees, Trainers and Programme Directors to help us document things observed, experienced or enacted in Clinical Practice during lockdown. We said they could be of a clinical innovation, a humorous story, a poignant moment, a staff wellbeing event; anything which, on reflection in years to come, would be an image that might bring to mind one of those #CovidStories, something that would captures the moment.

With the amazing creative input of Elly McGinn and Rachel Hawkins of the NIMDTA GP Department we pulled the images and the related story together into a journal. We then held an event for Celebration during which we had a Q&A about some of these stories.

You can view the journal, a recording of our event and a special song written and recorded by Dr Chris Kyle below.