Hi Katy Webinar 8th December is on WBA's. Personally I've no experience as of yet. I'm hoping it's going to be ok to prioritize other work then do some catching up re OLAT evidence and assessments etc after March. Ronnie

Hi all, Hope you are well. Just as a point on completing DOPs- at the induction meeting it was advised that rather than re-invent the wheel- we could exempt ourselves from any DOPs we felt were unnecessary to support our continuing HSST development. For example, I have spent the last few years checking/reporting/signing haem-onc G band reports and therefore do not need to 'waste' time getting a new DOP on this. I figured the best approach was to write a brief summary to support why I did not feel a DOP was needed and upload this to OLAT instead. I have also since contacted Mike Thomas and he has confirmed that this approach is fine and even recommended the same solution! See his reply below: 'I would suggest a brief note referencing any previous evidence/exemption you may have on that competency is all that is required. The DOPS are provided as examples and there is no minimum number specified.' Just as an additional bit of info- I also asked regarding non-specific pieces of evidence which do not come under any of the 5 listed on OLAT. For example, leadership courses/management meetings and he has replied... 'Where these do not overlap into specific competency areas they can be recorded as a reflective note'. Hope this is of help? I do find OLAT/competency/assessment a little confusing and any further support/feedback on this thread would be appreciated.

Thanks for all this, it is all very useful. I do think, being the first year to trek through this, the more we can share and support each other the better! I have taken what Mike Thomas said at the induction day quite literally and have changed what DOP stands for! I do think that the list of the DOPs and OCEs provided on OLAT at the beginning of the course were obviously very hastily put together and I don't think they are at the right level. A lot of them are word for word identical to STP DOPs and OCEs and I am not sure what is to be gained from doing them all. Retrospectively I can demonstrate nearly all of them. I am trying to think of WBAs that demonstrate I am taking a step up from the work that I was doing before. I am personally missing some Molecular skills and I know I will need to start at the bottom and work my way up for these, but outside of FRCPath, I will mostly be looking at developing my leadership/innovation/development skills. As a result, coming up with WBAs that actually demonstrate these things is not proving that easy. At the moment I am mostly trying to take advantage of things that come along in the lab, write them up and then will upload them as reflective notes. It will be interesting to see what they say in the next Webinar, but any more comments/ideas are very greatly appreciated...not least if you think what I have said here sounds bonkers and you want to correct me!!

Hi all,

I have been trying to get as many DOPS done as I can before I got on mat leave on Friday...!

As someone else has mentioned I have also been interpreting DOPS as the re-envisaged format for HSST and outlined at the induction day (didn't go, but saw it from the presentation slides) - Demonstration Of Professional Skills. Which actually makes a lot more sense for us as HSSTs but also with regard to how they are written; many of them cannot be observed and therefore do not make sense as DOPS in the STP sense, as Direct Observation of Practical Skills.

As a few people have said quite a few can quite easily be done using everyday work (i.e. DOPS IG-1: Interpretation of chromosome results for either haematological or constitutional samples and use of correct ISCN nomenclature.) and for some I have used work previous to starting HSST (i.e. DOPS IG-1: Analyse and interpretation of FISH results. To include leukaemias. - as the lab I work in now is purely constitutional.). For these I have just provided a list of cases I have analysed and reported as evidence. Others I have had to liase with other staff in the department to help me out with, for example genetic counsellor (GC) with DOPS IG-4: Pedigree Construction and Analysis and DOPS IG-4: Perform risk calculation i.e. Bayes calculations and H&S lead for DOPS IG-3: Undertake an audit (Health and Safety in Genetics Practice). For these I have written a couple of pages on background info and how I fulfilled the DOPS, i.e role play of GC session for pedigree construction, with scanned in diagrams from the session. The only OCE that I have done is the OCE IG-3 Critically review and make recommendations for amendments of a SOP (although it is under "Health and Safety in Genetics Practice", so this may mean that it should be reviewing a H&S SOP or paying particular attention to an SOP that has an H&S focus?). Looking at the list I'm thinking that I could probably use my GC session role play from my DOPS for OCE IG-4 Take a patient history (can be undertaken in a virtual patient environment). So for both the OCEs I will be using the same evidence as for the associated DOPS.

All of the above has come from my and my trainer's interpretation of the outlines WBAs for HSST, so I have no idea whether what I am doing is satisfactory to the NSHCS! It just feels good to be getting something done and on OLAT before I leave for a yearish on Friday!! Fingers crossed things are a bit clearer when I return next year...

Anyway, hope that the above info on how we have tackled it will help some of you with completing yours! The main issue I have come up against is that HSST trainees can't upload their own evidence onto OLAT as far as I can tell? So this means emailing it to my assessor for them to upload themselves. If someone else has found a way around this please let me know.

Best of luck to you all for the next year of WBAs, MBS work, cross training and FRCPath exams (hope those that sat practical exam were happy with the outcome?!). I will try and keep as up to date as possible with how things are progressing while I am away on maternity leave - I am picking up MBS Unit A1 while still on leave in September - so I will catch up with those of you that deferred then.

Emma