The principles of NPMT

1: Keep It Simple and Practical!

The aim of NPMT is to ease the transition to internship by providing practical tips and frameworks to enhance learning. Consider visiting the wards, utilising real charts and bring your work to your teaching. The best teaching sessions are often not the longest and students have study to do so set a realistic time period and keep to it.

2: The more engaging the better

Be friendly, approachable and you will find students ask questions they’d never ask otherwise. Your ability to relate to students having so recently been one is one of the key reasons we think near-peer teaching is so effective. Get students as involved as possible in each mode of teaching whether this be worksheets, examining patients (see our guide to setting up a bedside teaching tutorial), or using forms from the ward to chart insulin or fluids. Don’t forget to have fun, enthusiasm is contagious!

Minimise Powerpoints! We’ve all died by powerpoint. It’s drastically overused in teaching, and rarely necessary. It will turn you from a small tutorial teacher into a lecturer which defies the principle benefits of NPMT by reducing interactivity. Consider whether it is actually needed - which is mostly confined to pictorial illustration.

3: Work together

Get a teammate! Presenting a session with a fellow doctor makes the presentation less stressful, offers the opportunity to bounce off each other like House and Wilson and potentially provide different perspectives. Squeezing teaching into the otherwise hectic schedule of the medical production line is hard, so help others by sharing the work you do so we all benefit!

Core skills