Near Peer Medical Teaching (NPMT) Central Coast is a teaching program for medical students run by junior doctors in the Central Coast Local Health District. We deliver supplementary teaching sessions to medical students in their clinical years, focusing on core clinical concepts and practical knowledge to help students transition from medical student into junior doctors.

Our website contains our catalogue of teaching resources which are available to both teachers and students. Through a Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAME) model, we provide junior doctors with accessible resources to plan and deliver teaching sessions.

Our primary aims are:
- To provide accessible and relevant clinical education sessions for medical students.
- To support medical students transitioning into their role as junior doctors.
- To help junior doctors develop as clinical educators through teaching opportunities and further training.
- To provide resources to assist junior doctors in planning and delivering teaching sessions – both formal and ad hoc.
- To ensure our resources are up to date and valid, with appropriate senior clinician oversight of our content

Near-Peer teaching is a relatively new concept in clinical teaching research but reflects an age-old mentoring process whereby advice and teaching is informally handed over to the next generation.

Near-peer definitions differ depending on the source consulted but generally reflect a gap in training of between 1-5 years. The magnitude of this gap is significant as one of the pivotal identified features that make’s near-peer teaching unique and beneficial is the concept of cognitive congruence. The idea that the close alignment in knowledge framework, experience and language. This is perceived to create an atmosphere of discussion where students are more comfortable to explore the gaps in their knowledge.

Despite multiple published articles attesting to both the success and widespread nature of both formal and informal near-peer teaching it faces a number of challenges:

-       Time to revise information and topics taught
-       Time to perform lesson planning
-       Time to prepare resources and presentation aids
-       Standardisation of teaching
-       Senior clinician oversight of content

Our website seeks to address these challenges and by doing so empower the next generation of clinical teachers.

The Near-Peer program originated in 2016 as STITCCH (Surgical Trainee Initiated Teaching at Central Coast Hospitals), a program of 10 fundamental modules delivered to students on surgical rotations at Gosford Hospital. This program focussed on orientating students to the hospital system, teaching them core surgical concepts and clinical skills, and introducing them to the roles and responsibilities of a junior doctor. STITCCH spawned several offshoot programs, including Bedside teaching, Skills teaching workshops, research collaboration initiatives and teacher training workshops.

In 2019, then STITCCH chair Nicholas Hewett joined these programs together under the banner of Near Peer Medical Teaching (NPMT) Central Coast. There are 3 main arms of the program: Tutorials, Skills Teaching and Bedside Teaching. The NPMT website was also launched in 2019. Our teaching resources are freely available on the website, and aim to provide an accessible resource for junior doctors to conduct teaching sessions – both formal and ad hoc.

In 2020. with the COVID-19 Pandemic and its impacts of hospital life and medical education we have made the temporary switch to video conference teaching.

2021, we are now back to face to face teaching and have expanded the number of bedside tutorials, skills and teaching sessions with students. We have also recruited more writers and hope to keep expanding our website content.

Director Teaching and Research Unit

Amanda Dawson
Dr Dawson is a Specialist Academic General Surgeon on the Central Coast of NSW, an Associate Professor to the University of Newcastle and the Clinical Dean and Director of Education and Research at the Central Coast. She has been a foundational pillar and ongoing source of support to the NPMT program since its inception in 2015. Her work provides key experience in education and a grounding in educational research which facilitates evidence-based teaching to flourish on the Central Coast.

2024 team

Chair

Vivian Lin - Contact on vivian.lin@health.nsw.gov.au

bedside chairs

Myurie Wijayakumar and Jonason Yang

Medicine Chairs

Andreas Chambers, Shubhang Hariharan, Yoshua Selvadurai

Surgery chairs

Renwick Simpson and Esther Tseng

Radiology Chair

Peter De Krey

Teaching and Research chairs

Isaac Wade and Rachel Yager

skills and critical care Chairs

Zoe (Hui Ying) Lee, Charles Roth, Annette Onodi

Interprofessional Learning

Daniel Heidegger, Mahli Kumarasinhe

Media and communciations

Naleesha Habib

Founding team:

Junior Medical Officers

• Richard Arnold

• Jeremy Webb

• Ben Reardon

• Natalie Nicholas

• Sarah Wong

• Shiram Swaminathan

Senior Medical Officers and Institutional Support

• Amanda Dawson

• Martin Veysey

Awards

Richard Arnold (STITCCH Member) and STITCCH were awarded one of the inaugural 2017 Teaching Excellence Awards from the University of Newcastle Academy of Clinical Educators; this awards seeks to recognise innovation in clinical teaching.

Presentations

1. Development of a FOAM Website dedicated to Near-Peer Education and Teaching N Hewitt U Pahalawatta, A Dawson ANZMPMEF 2019

2. Creating Video Skills resources for procedural skills teaching. U Pahalawatta, G Kerrison-Watkin, A Parkinson, S Freeman, J Maloney, A Dawson. ANZMPMEF 2019

3. Motivations for Teaching and Research. U Pahalawatta, K Cho, W Hu, A Dawson ANZMPMEF 2019

4. Development of a Single education session for development of JMO teaching Skills. U Pahalawatta, A Dawson ANZMPMEF 2019

5. Creating and Implementing Collaborative Research Protocols. A Drane, U Pahalawatta, A Dawson ANZMPMEF 2019

6. Creating an Effective Hospital Culture: Collaboration between Education, Workforce and JMOs U Pahalawatta, A Dawson ANZMPMEF 2019

7. Short B, Lambeth L, David M, Ryall M, Hood C, Pahalawatta U, Dawson A. 2019. Facilitating a successful transition from academic to clinical education for medical students. Poster presentation at the International Association for Medical Education, AMEE August 2019. AMEE Conference, Vienna 2019

8. An introduction to Coastal Wilderness Medicine – BEACCHES. U Pahalawatta, M David, A Dawson WADEM Congress, Brisbane 2019

9. A Novel Method for improving Procedural Skills among Medical students and improving procedural skill teaching capability of JMOs. U Pahalawatta, M David A Dawson International Clinical Skills Conference, Prato 2019

10. How to create a self-sustainable research organisation? Xiao-Ming Sarah Woon-Shoo-Tong, Upuli Pahalawatta, Andrew Drane, Amanda Dawson Surgical Trainee Organisation for Research on the Central Coast (STORCC) General Surgeons Australia Annual Scientific Meeting / CSSANZ Spring Colorectal Meeting Hobart Tasmania

11. Facilitating a successful transition from academic to clinical education for medical Students, U Pahalawatta, B Short, C Hood, L Lambeth, MA Ryall, M David, A Dawson ANZPMEF, Melbourne 2018

12. Lambeth L, David M, Short B, Ryall M, Hood C, Dawson A. Training Central Coast’s future doctors at BEACCHES – a quality improvement project. CCLHD Research, Quality & Innovation Symposium, Gosford, Australia, 29th of October, 2018.

13. Invitation to present at the November Annual Academic Surgery Conference 7-8 Nov 2019 Melbourne RACS Office Building Networks in the JDoc Space: STORCC Andrew Drane 

14. Development of a Near-Peer Radiology Education Program for Undergraduate Medical Students. U Pahalawatta, S Teh, D Ong, R Rattan, A Dawson E-Poster, accepted RANZCR, Auckland 2019

15. Exploring motivators and consequences of engaging in a near-peer educational program as tutors and leaders. Phenomenological perspectives of Australian Junior Medical Officers in one Local Health District. V Lin, E Leopardi, R Yager, B Reardon, A Dawson. Oral presentation, ANZPMEF, Darwin 2024.

Publications

Short B, Lambeth L, David M, Ryall M, Hood C, Pahalawatta U, Dawson A. 2019. An immersive orientation program to improve medical student integration and wellbeing. The Clinical Teacher; 16(4):323-328. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.

Grants

Upuli Pahalawatta - $2000 travel grant obtained to facilitate overseas international conference presentations listed above.