From Chocolate Truffles to Trophy Wins: Sweet Success🍫

I know it’s been a while since my last Feature Friday article, and I want to acknowledge that I hit a bit of writer’s block😭 But fear not! I’ve been working on broadening my horizons, looking for more fun and exciting content to feature in our newsletter😅

As always, I’m open to suggestions—so if you have any great ideas or someone in the department you’d like to see highlighted, please hit me up! I’ll happily do the rest of the work and ensure we showcase the best of our team🤝

This week, we have the pleasure of congratulating Professor Sandra Spijkerman, who won Best Poster at our Faculty Research Day for the third year in a row🥳 Her poster focused on standardising undergraduate anaesthesia learning outcomes to make anaesthesia safer and more accessible in peripheral hospitals in South Africa. It’s a well-deserved achievement, and we are all incredibly proud of her🙏

For those who aren’t familiar, Prof. Spijkerman recently represented our department at the AMEE Congress in Basel, Switzerland 🇨🇭 . We asked her to share her experiences with us, and here’s what she had to say:

Tell us more about the AMEE congress?

"AMEE stands for An International Association for Medical Education. They host an annual AMEE Congress where Health Sciences Education (HSE) educators, researchers, and professionals from around the world meet to share developments and ideas around HSE practices. This year it was held in Basel, Switzerland. There are many parallel presentation streams covering all areas of HSE, such as Faculty Development, Curriculum Development, Teaching and learning, assessment, CPD training, Technology Enhanced Learning, student support, research in HSE, and many more. It’s wonderful to learn from educationalists and colleagues from other clinical and basic sciences disciplines. I enjoy the workshops. This time I attended one on systematic reviews (in education, but the skills are transferable to clinical research), and another on Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA), which is a hot topic at the moment around the world, but also at the CMSA. The best part for me is however the networking and people that one gets to meet. This year I met a Swiss anaesthetist involved with the development of their Anaesthesiology registrar EPAs. It’s very interesting to discuss the contextual differences between registrar training in Switzerland and South Africa. Our newly-qualified specialists are able to do so much more!

My presentation at AMEE this year was a study that I’ve done with the Health Sciences dean at UCT (also an anaesthetist) and the previous Health Sciences deputy dean here at UP. We looked at the factors that influence undergraduate students’ learning in their current anaesthesia curricula in South Africa. We used Cognitive Load Theory as a theoretical framework. The Q&A session afterwards elicited a rich discussion, which is what one hopes for when you present your work."

How was Switzerland? And should it be on everyone’s bucket list?

"Definitely! It’s beautiful! The people are very friendly and the chocolate is to die for! I’ve attended a champagne truffle-making workshop at the Lindt Home of Chocolate in Zürich. I got to keep the 28 truffles that I made😊. We worked in pairs, and of all the random people in the world, I was paired with an O&G registrar, originally from Romania but studying in Zürich. You might just all move there if you hear what registrars earn in Switzerland. The living costs might just send you right back though. Switzerland is very expensive, but Basel (where the congress was held) borders on Germany and France, so you can literally walk to one of the other two countries to shop (been there, done that, no money left for the T-shirt …)!"

Tell us a little about your Faculty Day poster and the prize that it won?

"Faculty Research Day (actually two days) is the ideal platform to showcase the research that was done by UP staff in the past year. Our department usually enters between 3-12 posters. It makes me so proud to see our registrar studies on display. This year Dr Naidoo and Dr Mlabateki displayed beautiful posters that we will soon mount in the department. For me, the purpose of showcasing the work is to give credit to those who have completed excellent research projects, but more importantly, to show those who are starting out that it’s possible to do the research project, complete it in time, and do work that is worthy of sharing on such a platform. Putting up the posters in the department afterwards is equally meant to encourage those to come.

I’m humbled and honoured that my poster won first prize in the “advanced academic” category. It’s the third year in a row, which makes it very special for me. I must credit the graphic designer who designed a beautiful poster from the 4 pages of words that I submitted. This year my poster showed a study that I’ve done with the same team as the work that I presented at AMEE. It was a consensus national undergraduate anaesthesia curriculum that we developed in a 3-round Delphi study with experts from around the country. It aimed to standardise undergraduate anaesthesia learning outcomes to make anaesthesia safer and more accessible in peripheral hospitals in South Africa."

To junior registrars or new consultants, what advice would you give regarding research and these accolades?

"Everything we do should be informed by research. The contextual differences between South Africa and high-income countries warrant research by South Africans for South Africans. For registrars, my first bit of advice is that it’s never too early to start. The sooner you get going, the sooner it’s done. The process takes longer than one thinks. My second pearl of wisdom is that it’s very possible to do a registrar research project worthy of a publication. Even in high-impact international journals. Watch this space!

Regarding the accolades, it’s humbling when one’s work is acknowledged and the impact of the research recognised. It shows that it’s possible to do meaningful research in our resource-constrained environment. I hope it inspires future enthusiastic researchers in our department!"

How do we as South Africans, especially in the public sector, fare with the world in terms of innovation, support, and education?

"We’re definitely right up there in terms of practical skills learning opportunities, in both undergraduate and postgraduate training. Due to the case load, I believe our training hospitals offer excellent opportunities for practical skills development. If I just reflect on the past week, I was involved with so many interesting airway cases in a single week! I believe you can drive your own learning by looking for opportunities to perform certain skills such as awake fibreoptic intubations.

We have brilliant innovative minds in South Africa. Our limited resources often stimulate innovative thinking. Here I’m reminded of the MMed studies of Dr Mabelane and Dr Janse van Rensburg, both supervised by Dr Dawid van der Merwe. They produced affordable alternatives to expensive equipment with a 3D printed videolaryngoscope blade and a caudal block part-task trainer.

I do think we can improve on the support part. Anaesthesia can be very lonely with everyone focusing on their own theatre. We need initiatives like this newsletter to bring us closer together as a department. It helps people to know that they’re not alone and others struggle sometimes too. Please keep up the publication!"

We are incredibly grateful to Prof. Spijkerman for always making time in her busy schedule to answer our questions and share such valuable insights with us. Her support for the newsletter is truly appreciated, and we hope to continue doing justice to the amazing work she and our department accomplish. Stay tuned for more exciting features, and don’t hesitate to reach out with any ideas! 💜🙏