18 June 2013
A cancer specialist at Jersey General Hospital has been recognised by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) for the standard of his medical teaching.
The RCP has awarded Dr Sivasithamparam Himayakanthan, known as Dr Hima, the status of RCP Educator. It is the first time that the accreditation has been awarded to a Jersey doctor.
The accreditation, designed to emphasise the role of the doctor as an educator, recognises the standard of teaching that Dr Hima provides to student doctors and other medical colleagues. Becoming an RCP Educator has also enabled him to become an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and he will be entitled to use AFHEA after his name.
He said “I found this course very interesting, and if any other doctors in Jersey were interested in undertaking it I’d be very happy to help them.”
It took Dr Hima, who works in the Oncology Unit, 18 months to complete the training, which involved him completing modules that included:
- a workplace assessment
- on-the-job teaching
- effective teaching skills
- being part of a peer support network
- two assignments
Dr Hima is known in Jersey for the charity Island Friends Together, which he founded to support orphanages and poor schools in Sri Lanka and southern India.
He will receive the accreditation in July at a RCP ceremony in London.
The RCP seeks to improve the quality of patient care by setting and monitoring the standards of medical training. It supports its members by offering education programmes for physicians, and it plays a wider role in public health through campaigning for change, advising government, and taking part in national debates on medical, clinical and public health issues.
gov.je