Ms Fiona Coia
Nominated by her colleagues, Ms Fiona Coia has received an Excellent Longstanding Service Award for Undergraduate Clinical Education.
Fiona has been with the Mid Yorks Med Ed team for 15 years, she has been instrumental in building all of the education programmes and placements at the trust for Year 1 to Year 5 students, and has led the team to an award-winning reputation in the region.
Fiona has used her substantial clinical background to help medical students understand all concepts of healthcare practices in a non-intimidating, easy to understand way. Her first-hand experience of inter-professional working brings a different perspective to undergraduate medical training, and has helped provide countless students with a better understanding of the how healthcare works in a practical sense. She teaches confidently on a wide variety of topics, switching at ease to support the educational needs of students with differing levels of knowledge and confidence. The small group teaching she delivers covers everything from basic histories and examinations to more complex pharmaceutical considerations when caring for patients. She regularly provides clinical skills sessions and has been instrumental is setting up and maintaining the provision of formative Objective Structured Clinical Examinations for 3rd, 4th and 5th years and Mid Yorkshire Hospitals. She has also supported summative assessments for Leeds School of Medicine as an examiner for the OSCEs, and is invited to participate every year. Delivery of undergraduate education has changed more recently, with remote teaching sessions, integration of technology to support standard education sessions and flipped-classroom approaches becoming more commonplace. Fiona has adapted to these new ways of working whilst still ensuring a student-centred approach.
During the COVID pandemic Fiona worked with the postgraduate team to develop and deliver teaching of clinical skills to senior doctors to enable them to be prepared forredeployment to other areas if required. She was able to quickly adapt her teaching to working with a very different cohort of people, highlighting her capability to be flexible in her education style. As part of the COVID-19 response Fiona also helped to train up 4th and 5th year medical students as physician helpers to work clinically with other staff members. As part of this, she worked an on -all rota providing pastoral support for the students, and was contacted several times out of hours to help students with a variety of issues. Fiona is regarded as the most senior clinical teaching member of the team, not only in years of education experience, but also in terms of support for medical students and education colleagues. She regularly goes above and beyond to support the wellbeing of students, supporting them whilst they are on placement on Mid Yorkshire Hospital, but also considering this pastoral role after they have moved to other rotations to ensure they achieve their potential. Almost without exception it can be expected that Fiona will be mentioned by name in all University feedback for providing invaluable educational experiences, but also incredible support for professional and personal wellbeing and development. She has won several clinical teaching excellence awards in recognition of this.