At a Workshop

I was rather surprised when I turned up at 8am to see one of the participants sitting outside the training room waiting. Yemenis are not the most punctual of people and rarely arrive early! As I set up the laptop to show presentations, other participants began to arrive, so that by 8:30am about 80% of the teachers and participants were present.

Time keeping is not a strength!

Practice what you teach

The teaching style here is usually didactic with the lecturer giving a lecture and the students writing notes, however the aim of the workshop was training other members of the Medical School staff in Communication Skills. Therefore we were using a learner-centred approach with role-plays, small group work, video clips and mini lectures.

The usual teaching style

Your mother's dead

Clutching a mobile, I hurried past an anxious relative and briskly told them that their mother had died! Thankfully this was a role play of the way not to share bad news! All the participants laughed and contributed ideas for how to share bad news properly, but unfortunately the role play was very close to the truth of how bad news is given in the hospitals here. Participants then practised these new skills themselves in role plays and it was encouraging to see how quickly they grasped new ideas and began to use them to change their attitudes and behaviours.

Practising new skills

Relational skills are much more prevalent than organisational skills in the culture here, which is why the certificates for completing the workshop had yet to be printed, an hour before the workshop was due to finish! The secretary was at the wedding of a relative, and no-one else knew where the card for the certificates was kept. So someone was sent to buy card and quickly the replacement secretary was busy typing names for the certificates. Meanwhile the doctor organising the workshop was whispering to me to keep the teaching session going whilst the administrative details were being sorted out!

People love collections of certificates!

More than just a certificate

Great importance is placed on gathering certificates from different courses and so the participants were pleased to receive a signed and stamped certificate for their attendance and participation in the 3 day workshop. However, of more importance, was that they had learnt new skills in communicating with patients and were beginning to put these into practice.