Dr Karen Lynne Mattick

National Teaching Fellow 2005 My background is as a Clinical Scientist working for the Public Health Laboratory Service, initially in a prestigious three year Grade A Clinical Scientist training post in microbiology. The broad training covered diagnostic, epidemiology and research methodology skills and experience, plus formal study towards an MSc Clinical Microbiology at the Royal London Hospital (awarded 1997). On completion of my training, I took on a three year Clinical Scientist research post, resulting in the award of a PhD by the University of Exeter in 2001 and then moved to a Grade B Clinical Scientist post based at the University of Bristol before joining the Peninsula Medical School in July 2002. In my current role at Peninsula, I am the academic lead for pathologyand eLearning, and heavily involved in curriculum design and delivery. In medicine, it is accepted that one should use the best available evidence when making decisions that affect practice. In education, the logic is the equally valid but there are less stringent guidelines and frameworks directing how undergraduate education should happen. I am interested in generating an evidence-base for undergraduate and postgraduate medical training and, particularly, assessing the impact of interventions with an educational component. I was awarded an MSc Education Research in 2004 and my National Teaching Fellowship in 2005. My NTF award is funding a project exploring medical decision making in newly qualified doctors and, particularly, the contribution that biomedical science knowledge makes to medical decision making. This will ultimately define a core curriculum for the biomedical sciences within undergraduate medical programmes.