Trainings
Trainings are educational workshops using interactive and experiential methods, through which members of HelMSIC are trained on a variety of topics. Most of the times they are based on peer education: they are conducted by trained medical students and the participants are medical students too. HelMSIC obtains the largest pool of peer education trainers among the greek students NGOs and our trainers are trained on many topics – mostly related to our Standing Committees, including soft skills, Sexual & Reproductive Health, Human Rights, Medical Education and Public Health.
- Soft skills | Communication skills, Feedback, Group Dynamics, Leadership, Advocacy etc.
- Sexual & Reproductive Health | Safer Sex, STIs, LGBT+ Issues, Maternal Health etc.
- Human Rights | Populations on move, Addiction, Access to Health, Stigma etc.
- Medical Education | Social Accountability, Meaningful Students’ Involvement, Human Resources for Health etc.
Trainings are organised in order to educate the members and develop their skills. Through them, medical students gain new knowledge and are trained on communication, organisation and facilitating skills, which can help them both within HelMSIC and as future medical practitioners.
Soft Skills Trainings
They include topics like communication skills, team building, presentation skills & public speaking, strategic planning, conflict management, leadership, time management, decision making etc. They are skills that anyone may obtain, but they are developed through training and practice and they are extremely useful for an active and skilled medical practitioner.
Soft skills trainings are held:
- locally and aim to improve the dynamics and function of the Local Committees and their members
- nationally, in all of the National Meetings of HelMSIC, where those trainings are held for empowering and developing the active members. Also, HelMSIC organises Training Events, which educate and inspire medical students to learn more and to be even more active. Some of the training events organised by HelMSIC are held to create new trainers, who can pass their knowledge and experiences to other medical students. You can see more about Training Events in the part below.
Standing Committee specific Trainings
These are trainings which use peer education methods and focus on a specific topic, related to one of the Standing Committees HelMSIC is active on: SCORA, SCORP, SCOME & SCOPH. Peer education is a non formal education method, in which trainers and trainees are peers – people of the same age, similar background and who are sharing common concerns and questions.
In HelMSIC, SC Trainings target at providing knowledge, exchanging ideas and sensitizing medical students on topics that are mostly not included in their medical curriculum and are really important for both their profession and their social role as future medical practitioners. The utter goal of those trainings is behaviour change though interactive and experiential methods, used in them.
SC Trainings are held:
- as part of local or national projects, like World AIDS Day (WAD), Learining Strategies about Drugs (LSD), Gender Based Violence etc.
- nationally both in some of the National Meetings and in Training Events, which aim to educate medical students or create new peer education trainers and are called HelPETs (HelMSIC Peer Education Trainings). Some HelPETs by HelMSIC are: SCORA PET (Sexual & Reproductive Health HelPET), TNHRT (Training New Human Rights Trainers), PHeW (Public Health Workshop), EW (Exchanges Weekend)
Training Events
Every year HelMSIC organises events that aim to educate and empower its members, in order to promote its vision of future mindful and skilled medical practitioners, ensure quality for its activities and create sustainability.
Training events are few-days events, which are held nationally or internationally and include training sessions focusing on a specific topic. They are facilitated by trained medical students who train other medical students through peer education methods. After the participation in one of those training events someone can become a trainer for the topic on which the workshop focused.
HelMSIC has organised many training events, some of them in national level, targeting only greek medical students (HelMSIC Peer Education Trainings, since 2011) and in international level with participants from all over the world (HelMSIC International Training 2014 & 2018). Most of Training Events held by HelMSIC are official IFMSA Sub-Regional Trainings and the trainers created by them are official IFMSA Trainers.
Take a closer look at the workshops that have been organised by HelMSIC in the past few years.
HIT is a Sub Regional Training Event in Greece aiming to educate medical students from around the world. It consists of different peer education workshops giving the participants the opportunity to gain knowledge, practice their skills, enhance their personal abilities, exchange ideas and concerns and get inspired. Through peer education methods and interactive learning, participants get involved in their own education and trainers have the chance to develop their own skills and gain experience.
Through this workshop, the participants will be able to develop their own soft skills through peer education methods. Soft skills, like time & crisis management, intercultural learning and leadership are useful tools for every medical student and future healthcare professional. By the end of this workshop, the trainees will not only have improved their own soft skills, gained knowledge and exchanged ideas, but they will also be able to train other medical students, in similar workshops.
TMET is a training event which focuses on medical education issues. During the workshop, students are trained to become Medical Education Trainers. They gain knowledge on topics, such as medical curriculum, social accountability, students’ involvement etc. and also tools to advocate towards Medical Education related subjects at the University, or other important stakeholders. Meanwhile, participants are educated in soft skills that will give them the chance to become trainers and educate other students accordingly.
PRET aims to provide its participants the knowledge that is essential to organise successful professional & research exchanges in their country and their local committee. Every medical student who will participate in this workshop will get a chance to get in contact with students from different places of the world, exchange ideas and learn new strategies and skills.
It’s the first HelPET that HelMSIC organised back in 2011 and the way Peer Education was introduced in HelMSIC. It is a comprehensive peer education training event focusing on topics, such as STIs, Safer Sex, Sexual Orientation & Gender ID, LGBT+ Rights and Access to Health, Maternal Health etc. Through this workshop the participants are equipped with knowledge, but also experiences that allow them to discuss with their peers about sensitive and important subjects, through similar training sessions that aim for behavioural change of the participants.
Training on Advanced Comprehensive Sexuality Education is a peer education workshop focusing on Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE). It is mostly developed for experienced on Sexual and Reproductive Health & Rights (SRHR) peer educators to help them advance their knowledge and skills used to facilitate CSE in schools and various other settings.
CSE plays an important role in fostering sexual and reproductive health and rights in the education of young people during a very sensitive and important period of their life.
The workshop mainly focuses on how to create a safe environment for CSE sessions and how to apply a sex-positive, age-appropriate and culturally sensitive approach to sexuality education. Part of the content is devoted on how to develop and deliver capacity-appropriate and pedagogically proven methods and how to handle different audiences.
TNHRT is a peer education workshop focused on Human Rights topics, through which the participants become Human Rights Trainers. These trainers are trained on topics, such as populations on move, addiction, access to health, stigma etc.
- Public Health Workshop (PHeW) – a peer education workshop through which participants acquire fundamental knowledge on public health.
- Exchanges Weekend (EW) – a national workshop focusing on Exchanges and the way that they should be organised both nationally and locally.
- Training Weekend (TW) – a weekend full of soft skills training sessions and a dash of SC trainings, for development, exchange of ideas and motivation of our members.
- PHLT (Public Health Leadership Training) – a training workshop, built on three major pillars – Leadership, Activity Management and Public Health. It equips participants with all the necessary skills needed to become an asset to the Public Health work performed in their country. The main priority of a PHLT is to empower future public health leaders and educate individuals to understand the intricate workings of activity management, create powerful activities and track their impact, as well as lead their communities towards better health.
