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Teaching Fellowships for junior doctors in their second post-graduate (FY2) year should be considered by medical students and junior doctors in UK. FY2 Teaching Fellowships are available in many foundation schools as part of the UK Academic Foundation Programme. Although programme structures differ between schools, they are designed to allow junior trainees to take time out from clinical practice to develop their teaching skills and gain insights into medication education careers. The advantages of an FY2 teaching fellowship include valuable experience of teaching and formal feedback not available to other trainees; the opportunity to further develop your portfolio; further development of the trainee's own knowledge and skills; the stimulation of working with students. Potential drawbacks to be considered are reduced direct clinical contact; reduced salary; difficulty carrying out education research in the allocated time frame; occasional difficulties establishing the teacher-student relationship while the trainee is at a relatively junior level. Experience of medical education as an FY2 trainee provides a helpful stepping stone whether or not the trainee further pursues education as a career, because the teaching skills are transferable to any specialty, and the unique experience enhances the trainee's confidence as a role model for junior colleagues.

Interactive laboratory class (ILC) is a two-way communication teaching method that encourages students to correlate laboratory findings with materials from lectures. In Thai medical education, active learning methods are uncommon. This paper aims to establish 1) if ILCs would effectively promote physiology learning; 2) if effectiveness would be found in both previously academically high-performing and low-performing students; and 3) the acceptability of ILCs to Thai medical students as a novel learning method. Two hundred seventy-eight second-year medical students were recruited to this study. We conducted three ILC sessions, which followed corresponding lectures. We carried out multiple-choice pre- and post-ILC assessments of knowledge and compared by repeated-measures ANOVA and unpaired t-test. Subgroup analysis was performed to compare high-performance (HighP) and low-performance (LowP) students. After the ILCs, participants self-rated their knowledge and satisfaction. Post-ILC test scores increased significantly compared with pre-ILC test scores in all three sessions. Mean scores of each post-ILC test increased significantly from pre-ILC test in both LowP and HighP groups. More students self-reported a "very high" and "high" level of knowledge after ILCs. Most students agreed that ILCs provided more discussion opportunity, motivated their learning, and made lessons more enjoyable. As an adjunct to lectures, ILCs can enhance knowledge in medical students, regardless of previous academic performance. Students perceived ILC as useful and acceptable. This study supports the active learning methods in physiology education, regardless of cultural context.

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This methodological article argues for the advantages of trainee health professionals investigating their own work contexts through qualitative research interviews with peers and presents such junior-to-junior interviews as method. The usefulness and flexibility of the method are demonstrated through two vignettes based on the authors’ individual experiences as junior medical doctors generating data through interviews with their peers. The article discusses specific considerations of junior-to-junior interviews: academic considerations including cognizance of reflexivity, trustworthiness, commitment, coherence; ethical considerations including hierarchy, confidentiality, support needs. The method has limitations including research being carried out by novices and on a small scale. However, we argue that junior-to-junior interviews allow for unique and valuable data generation, and encourage other practitioner-researchers to consider how this or similar methods may be integrated into research approaches across clinical disciplines, and organizational and cultural contexts.