Training Medical Education Trainers at T4ALL Portugal 2016

IFMSA > News > Training Medical Education Trainers at T4ALL Portugal 2016

The warmest experience I could ever ask for… Not only because it took place through a big heat wave in one of the hottest cities in Portugal, but also because the knowledge and different perspectives that were shared warmed my heart and started an explosion in my mind. In all honesty, when applying, I was expecting to learn a lot about theory, have a new understanding on Medical Education and maybe improve on my soft skills. And, though we’ve done all of that, it doesn’t make justice to what I take back, the way I’ve felt and how I’ve grown in just a week.

The trainings were handled gracefully and with excellence by our captains Stijntje and Rachel, providing us the right amount of knowledge on both Medical Education and Facilitation Skills and everyday taking in our feedback and as to adapt the next day. It was the greatest opportunity to learn by example. Also it was very interesting and clever how they would take recap and debriefs moments to make us think and built on ideas, how they would take a simple exercise and make us perform the task in hand as a team and with that actually building one. In other hand, even if we were setting the bar higher and scaling up, we had this feeling that coming back to one exercise we’ve done on the first day, that we were applying the knowledge that based the first session, it was this great cycle of self-development. This was also one of those great opportunities where you make friends by resemblance of visions, by admiring them and wanting to be part of their growth. Every person in the training gave me something and had an impact in my take on what it is to come. As said before, explosion in my mind and warmed my heart.

As the days were coming to an end, I got this idea that we are all up to something amazing and one of the reasons why is because this experience brought out the best in each of us, every feedback moment wasn’t taken lightly, but as a moment to work and improve on that glimpse we got that could make each of us greater. The truth is they created this whole analogy where we were on a plane and we would take off. At the end, I believe we flew and we will fly.