The BSG is pleased to extend their congratulations to Dr Phedra Dodds for her highly commended nomination for the BSG Dame Parveen Kumar for Education and Training Award 2023 (previously BSG Gold Trainer Award) for their impressive achievements and work as a trainer. The award recognises the work of excellent trainers in developing the future of the gastroenterology and hepatology specialty.

Dr Phedra Dodds has spent 23 years in endoscopy, first as an endoscopy nurse, then as an ANP and Clinical Endoscopist. A decade ago, Phedra became the first Consultant Nurse for Endoscopy in Wales and worked with the government to improve endoscopy services. She was awarded a PhD in Medicine for her work around IBD education, and after two decades scoping has now hung up her scope. She now works on her passion full time; as Lead for the South West Endoscopy Training Academy, creating educational materials for the workforce, and as the JAG JETS Workforce Clinical Lead.

If you know an excellent but under recognised trainer with the ability to turn things around for a trainee in difficulty and are the best advert of the society and profession to the next generation, please consider putting them forward for next year’s award.

Excellent trainers mean excellent training and safe patient care, and this award will help raise the profile of training and education within the society and wider NHS. The extract below is taken from her nomination:

'Phedra has been a guiding hand within the Joint Advisory Group on GI Endoscopy in setting up the UK-wide JETS Workforce e-competency framework. She was an early contributor to the development of the All Wales Endoscopy Nurse competency framework (on which the JETS workforce is based) and has tirelessly worked through each iteration of the tool to establish a quality standard for all endoscopy nurses training in the UK.

In Wales, we co-founded the Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) Clinical Endoscopist programme, which was the first structured programme in the UK to take clinical endoscopists from novice to fully independent colonoscopist, incorporating an MSc module. She also led the development of ENDO courses – level 1 Foundation, level 2 Therapeutic, and level 3 Leadership, Management and Teaching creating a training pathway for Endoscopy Nurses that has been adopted by JAG.

Working as Lead Nurse in the South West Endoscopy Training Academy she has provided strategic guidance on nurse training and the potential for accelerating the training pathway, as well as advising on the optimal delivery of ENDO courses.

She has also completed Clinical Leadership roles on the National Endoscopy Programme in Wales and the Endoscopy Training Management Group in HEIW to advise on the setting up of an Endoscopy Academy in Wales.'