Getting on in academic primary care

At the 2015 Annual Conference, we launched a new series of SAPC preconference career workshops - offering practical support for the challenges of our daily work.

We ran two workshops this year:

'Getting on in academic primary care' was co-hosted by SAPC (Dr Joanne Reeve and Professor Chris Dowrick) and NIHR (Dr Martin Ashton-Key and Kate Dowson).

'What to do when a journalist calls' was run by SAPC Exec member Dr Jeremy Horwood,  with the help of Dr Nadya Anscombe.

Twenty delegates attended the Getting On... workshop. People told us they were looking for help in becoming an independent researcher -  in leading research that makes a difference. And secondly in building a career profile - standing out from the crowd.

A tall order for a morning's work but we dived straight in to the first task of Telling better stories. Each member of the group had to present an elevator pitch to an imaginary Bill Gates outlining why he should give them £2million for their research. We worked together to improve the stories, with a head to head competition at the end to find the winning pitch. Great fun, but with some serious messages behind it all...

In the second half of the workshop, we outlined ways to get involved with the  work of NIHR and SAPC to build your portfolio and extend your CV.

Wrapping it all up with an inspiring presentation from Dr Helen Stokes-Lampard who gave us a whistle stop account of how she has 'Got on' in academic primary care.

The group told us that the workshop was helpful, thought provoking, and fun!

So we will be running the event again and aiming to roll out this and related workshops at regional meetings and other venues in the future.