Education and training

Visit Our Resources or the Science Knowledge Hub to find material to support the training and development of Clinical Scientists and Medical trainees in Clinical Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology.

These pages provide information from the Trainees' Committee, links to documents, educational resources and events that will help your training and career development.

The Education, Training and Workforce committee arrange the LabMedUK training day, a residential training course every two years and support the Management Training Course which also occurs every two years. The committee have also developed statistics training days and on-line training days to support training and ongoing continued professional development.

The committee is starting to populate a range of ‘How to’ presentations that can be found in the ‘Our Resources’ section as well as ‘Cases for thought’ (General or Specialist). These are example cases covering a variety of topics which act as prompts for trainees to discuss clinical actions/review knowledge with peers or supervisors. Model answers are provided however trainees are encouraged to access these after they have formed their own thoughts on the case. We are looking to expand our library of these and more will be made available over the course of 2021.

Duty Biochemist scenario presentations can also be found in the Our Resources section alongside previous training course presentations.

Further useful educational resources can be accessed on the EFLM e-learning platform.

For STP/HSST trainees, educational supervisors should be able to sign post you to other relevant resources and your regional tutor is also available for guidance and support. Some regions offer tutorials, examination preparation days and regional trainee clinical topic days. These will be advertised within your region via the ACB email, mailbase or regional team directly.

When preparing for the FRCPath examination please ensure you cover and are aware of the College curriculum for your speciality available on the Royal College of Pathologists website. The STP curriculum aids preparation for the FRCPath but there will be areas that require further work and more depth of knowledge. We would also suggest undertaking the following as part of your preparation:

• Ask work colleagues/supervisors to prepare mock questions or scenarios to aid your preparation.
• Go through Deacon’s challenges or Diggle’s (available in Our Resources).
• Refer to the example questions available on the Royal College of Pathologists website.
• Ensure that you have spent enough time as duty biochemist and have gained enough exposure to clinical cases, EQA reports, difficult interpretive scenarios including some knowledge to specialist testing that may not take place in your local laboratory.

Talk to other trainees especially those who have recently taken the examination to determine how they prepared and what they would do differently. If you do not have a colleague that has recently undertaken the examination please contact the trainees committee or your regional tutor and they will be able to assist in finding someone who could help.