ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the authors' experience of delivering a wide range of educational courses to hospital practitioners, outlining where possible the key principles and practical points. A mandatory requirement for those delivering postgraduate medical education must be to develop a better insight into the adult educational process if they are to develop effective teaching programmes. Delivery of high-quality teaching and training is currently metered against by several factors. The constantly changing socio-political backdrop means clinicians expend increasingly significant amounts of effort simply keeping the clinical service going. The learning organisation with its emphasis on the ability of an institution to develop and make progress based on its own experiences, is a powerful driver at the local level to 'Teaching the Teacher' programmes. The Royal College of Surgeons has been especially prominent in the development of programmes for teaching technical skills, borne on the twin pressures of fast-evolving technology and closer scrutiny by an increasingly watchful public.
