Recycling has come a routine part of our day-to-day lives.

Thanks to numerous campaigns, we all have learned that the resources of this planet are finite, and we need to look after them or our future would be very grim.

Although the future of education doesn’t look that grim at all, the concept of recycling is one worth reviewing. Our time is limited, we have many other commitments, and our energy and inspiration can be affected by many different factors (stressful clinical shifts, consecutive long shifts, lack of sleep, or simply life getting in the way of our creativity).

We spend so much time creating those great pieces for education, namely learning bites, teaching sessions, quizzes, crosswords, etc. and then, once delivered, they go straight into the bin, or to that drawer, we all have where things seem to migrate to Narnia, Mordor or Hogwarts to never be seen again.

But, does it really need to be like that?

I understand we don’t want to repeat the same content over and over again, as it may become repetitive to our colleagues and the session may lose some of its value (although there are lots to say about repeating content to help consolidate new concepts or ideas).

How often do you teach to the exact same group of people? I’m not a statistician, but if I add together the number of Junior and Senior trainees, plus ACPs (Advance Clinical Practitioners) or ENPs (Emergency Nurse Practitioners), and then look at the rota pattern and the number of healthcare practitioners starting at one time, and then you add night shifts, annual and study leave, post-night days off, different rotations through the year and many other factors. The likelihood of teaching the same content, to the same people becomes quite small, even if we were to use the same content twice a week. Then, why do we discard all that wonderful teaching material?

Let me introduce you to one of the “tools in my belt”, my beloved note book.

This little fellow has been with me for over one year now, and inside him, there are lots of resources to deliver learning bites.

I don’t have any commercial interest in the company itself, but for me, it is the right size. It comes with independent plastic pockets where you can insert A5-sized paper sheets, which happen to be the ones that I use to write my learning bites. Once I deliver the session, I put it inside it, and it lives in my office. If at any time I haven’t been able to create new content, I just reach inside it, flick through the different ones, and pick one for the day. This way, I know that I can always deliver a learning bite, regardless of how busy I have been.

The same principle applies to longer teaching sessions, which I save in my work and home computer. Give it a try and tell us if that works for you. As usual, we would love to hear from you. Keep the conversation alive and the ideas flowing.

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