Professor Gerry Gormley

Professor Gerry Gormley is a clinical academic at Queens University Belfast (QUB). He balances his time between being a General Practitioner and working in the medical school at Queens. He began his academic career as a Clinical Teaching Fellow in 2003. Since then, he has strived for excellence in his teaching and having a positive impact on his students. In 2007 he was promoted to a Senior Lectureship, and just recently to a Clinical Professorship in Simulation and Clincal Skills at QUB. His teaching is underpinned by a simple philosophy "to provide students with a stimulating learning experience that allows them to achieve their full potential and take a sense of pride in what they do." Impact of work He continually engages with the evidence base on how best to provide a transformative learning experience for his students. Where there are evidence gaps, he strives to address this by conducting pedagogical research. In nearly all of his educational projects, students have been co-investigators. Such an approach not only enriches the research but can have a positive impact on student development. For over 10 years, he led one of the main General Practice modules in the medical degree programme at QUB, providing over 2500 medical students with an in-depth experience of community-based healthcare. He  introduced several innovations to this course which has attracted sustained positive reviews by his students. He has won several awards for his teaching and published widely on his medical education endeavours. Furthermore, he developed a Scholarship and Educational Research Network (SERN) at the medical in QUB. SERN is an ambitious hub for health profession educational research and scholarship activities. A key role of his work is to motivate and support busy academics and students in their scholarly endeavours. To date this is one the largest medical education research groups in the UK, with over have over 11 postgraduate students, research prizes and sustained research outputs. Plans for the future In the future, Gerry plans to help develop a new simulation and experiential learning centre at QUB. This new centre will aim to promote excellence in healthcare education through an interprofessional simulation based approach that drives safe, effective and collaborative patient care.