How AW works in practice

See "The Clinical Teacher (2022) - Dornan - A toolkit that helps students learn to Act". This article, published open access and therefore free to all, can help any clinician help any student learn from any patient in any situation.

The AW thought-tool - SMAC

SMAC stands for Situation, Myself, Act, and Check. This thought tool is the ‘guts’ of AW. It helps a clinician approach a clinical situation, recognise the wishes needs and capabilities of patients and fellow clinicians, evaluate their capability to address the situation, act, and evaluate the wisdom of their action my checking.
SMAC card (insulin) with top tips | SMAC (generic)

Reflective case discussions

AW assumes that education and good clinical care are one and the same thing when a clinician follows the SMAC cycle ‘in the moment’ and then follows it in an educational setting, reflecting back on a situation they encountered and an action they took. This type of reflection on experience is supported by one-to-one discussions, where a facilitator (doctor, pharmacist, nurse, or [in the case of insulin prescribing] a person with diabetes) helps a (student) clinician use SMAC to learn from a prior experience that had personal meaning for them. You can download standard operating procedures (SOPs) for insulin-specific and generic case discussions with qualified clinicians, and procedures to extend this type of education to medical students.
Insulin-specific CBD SOP | Generic CBD SOP | Student Preparation SOP

Educating facilitators to help (student) clinicians learn

AW education is provided in a no-blame culture. The need to reduce harm to patients has sometimes resulted in clinicians being blamed for actions which seemed right at the time but did not turn out well. AW recognises that thoughtful analysis, support, and encouragement are far more powerful educational tools than blame. Facilitators are educated, follow the principles of Carl Rogers, to show positive regard towards learners and avoid making judgements. Facilitators help students identify what they learned from the situations they discussed and make commitments to wise future behaviour.  Our SOP for educating facilitators is downloadable by following this link.
Debriefer training SOPs - Coming Soon

Video-recordings

Recordings, made available with permission of those who took part in them, can be run from this site:
Coming Soon