peter cantillon

I graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1983. Following internship I decided to use my medical degree as a passport and did my GP training between the island of Jersey, Australia and Scotland. I completed general practice training in 1989 and spent two years working in a mission hospital in Africa. I joined the department of general practice at Guys, Kings & Thomas’ Medical School in London in 1992.I completed a Masters in General Practice and developed a specialist interest in the area of medical education. I returned to Ireland as a Senior Lecturer in Medical Informatics and Medical Education in 2000 at NUI Galway. I subsequently joined the then department of general practice at NUI Galway in 2003. I completed the Maastricht University Masters in Health Professional Education in 2007. I am currently undertaking a PhD on Clinical Education with Maastricht University. I was appointed Professor of Primary Care in 2007 and took up the post following a sabbatical at McGill in Canada in September 2008.  

My research interests include:

1. An exploration of the relationship between clinical teachers’ knowledge and their teaching behaviours.  This is linked to my second major research interest…..
2. Work based approaches to the development of clinical educators. 

I will be employing a mix of qualitative and lab based methodologies; these include ethnographic, phenomenological and discourse analysis approaches as well lab based teaching simulations and evaluations. It is my hope that such research will lead to a deeper understanding of the idiosyncratic frames of reference that underpin much of the variance in the teaching behaviours of clinical educators.I also plan to use the research findings to inform better and more effective faculty development approaches. 
My other great interest is in publishing interpretations of educational theory that are accessible for busy clinical educators many of whom do not have any formal training in education. One prominent example of this work is the British Medical Journal ABC of Learning and Teaching of which I was the lead editor but also the education series articles in the BMJ from 2003 onwards. A second edition will be published by Wiley Blackwell in 2010

Teaching

Postgraduate Teaching

I created the Masters in Clinical Teaching Programme which was launched as a Postgraduate Diploma in 2005 with the Masters commencing in 2008. This is a novel multi disciplinary distance learning programme and represents one of the few Masters in Clinical Education courses in the world. I lead two modules on the Postgraduate Diploma programme and two modules in the Masters programme. I am Director of the Masters in Clinical Teaching Programme.I helped to establish the Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Primary Care which is a programme targeted at clinicians, both nurses and General Practitioners, who work in the community. It is a course which was designed to meet the continuing professional development needs of community based practitioners and represents an excellent collaboration between secondary care experts and primary care module creators. I also teach on the Postgraduate Diploma in Primary Care course and the Masters in Primary Care. 

Undergraduate Teaching:

I led the development of the new NUI Galway Clinical Methods programme in which students in years one and two experience an integrated communications skills and clinical skills programme with early patient contact. I teach on the year four undergraduate general practice programme in which students spend four weeks in general practice and four weeks undergoing in-house general practice small group education.

Selected Publications

Cantillon P, McLeod P, Razack S, Snell L, Steinert Y.  Lost in translation: the challenges of global communication in medical education publishing. Medical Education 2009; 43:615-20

Cantillon P, Sargeant J.  Giving feedback in clinical settings. British Medical Journal 2008; 337:1292-1294

Cantillon P.  Teaching large groups. British Medical Journal 2003; 326:437

Williams C, Cantillon P, Cochrane M.  The clinical and educational experiences of pre-registration house officers in general practice. Medical Education 2001; 35:774-81

Cantillon P, Jones R.  Does continuing medical education in general practice make a difference? British Medical Journal 1999; 318:1276-9.

Click here for full publication list on PubMed

Future Work

Over the next four years, I hope to complete my PhD and to develop novel work based approaches to faculty development for clinical educators. I plan to develop an international profile in the important field of developing clinical education and hope to develop international collaborations that will support the continuation of this work. As Head of Department until July 2012, I hope to see the discipline of general practice grow both in terms of size and influence in Ireland and internationally.