Sustainability - Keeping Medsin Going

Introduction

Medsin branches, projects and campaigns come and go, strengthen and weaken as thing passes and interest levels change. The following is some advice about planning for sustainability.

Why plan for sustainability?

Medical students have a short shelf life: most of us will quality within a couple of years.
Most committees run on a year to year basis; an academic year is not a long time!

It is very difficult to balance Medsin commitments on top of a medical degree and have a social life and time to yourself! The bottom line is, we as individuals have limited time and energy to put into the Medsin. Hence, we must:

Work effectively and efficiently
Work together as a team
Share ideas, resources and knowledge by giving a good handover
Plan for the future! The only way is up, hopefully, but this takes a bit of insight and preparation.

Committee communication

Committee communication is so simple and so vital to success and sustainability.

1. Get the best start possible: at the initial meeting discuss:

Have you got all the information from your predecessors?
Do you understand all the ins and outs?
Do you have all the resources necessary to help you?
Ask questions, be a nuisance!

2. Set some ground rules

Although it seems bureaucratic and dull, brainstorming a set of ground rules can be a helpful way of collecting your thoughts for the year and thinking about how you want to work as a team. It’s also important to have a well-defined set of committee roles, so everyone understands their responsibilities. Built in flexibility in this is of course important.

3. Keep a central set of resources available to everyone: If you get something useful, DON’T KEEP IT TO YOURSELF! The same goes for contacts, advice and ideas. This is one of the key principles underpinning Medsin's cooperation and teamwork.

Can you get a central office space in your medical school that is accessible to anyone?
Set up a committee gmail account or group wiki, accessible to all the committee.
CC any correspondence you have with externals to at least one designated person on the committee. This way, there is always on other person who knows what is going on.

4. Be organised

Take minutes and write a summary at the top so the important points are conveyed to those who don’t want to read the whole thing (many people don’t!). Be obsessively organised, write everything down.

5. Conflict

Nip problems in the bud as soon as they arise. Conflicts often occur in committees and can be incredibly destructive. Worth going to teambuilding and conflict resolution training and remember that we’re all working for the same aims, so fighting in the committee is a tragic waste of time and energy.

6. Set goals and milestones with deadlines and then follow up to make sure that these things have actually happened.

7. Go to as much training as possible, educate yourselves and then tell people what you've learned!

8. Be realistic about what you can do. Yes, of course we do want to save the world single-handedly as a committee but good planning of things that we can achieve will get us much closer to our goals than well-meaning but huge unrealistic plans that collapse so we achieve nothing.

Accept your limitations and the fact that what you are capable of doing fluctuates.
If you can’t do something, do not be ashamed to ask others to help, we are all only human.
Take care of yourselves. Check up on your committee members and if someone is flagging, help them out and reassign the task so it gets done.

Giving your next committee the best possible start

By carrying out some of the suggestions above, a system will already be in place that makes their lives easier than yours was, so they can get on with the next stages.

HANDOVER

It is SO important to give your successors a good handover. Even if you’re looking forward to moving onto pastures new, its vital that you sit down and give them everything you think they could possibly need.

Refer to Medsin's Good Handover Guide for advice on how to prepare a handover.

Remember: Don't assume that everyone on the committee knows the ins and outs of your project/campaign/branch. Take the time to sit down with people and explain how it all works, as it's easy to take this for granted when you've been doing it for a while.

The Bigger Picture

Members

Medsin is nothing without its members: the battle to recruit and keep volunteers is probably the key to sustainability.

Be careful that your committee is not dominated by people from one year or friendship group. This can be intimidating for potential members who want to join but feel out of their depth or that the group is 'cliquey'. Make a concerted proactive effort to reach out to younger years as the future of our organisation depends on it.

Publicity

Take some time to sit down and think about why you are involved with Medsin. For many people, it’s a feeling more than anything, and it can be difficult to get this across to other people. Some of the ideas previous suggested (and you’ll find many more yourself) are:

Medsin has the potential to give every student the opportunity to undertake an exchange to another country for a part of their course.
Medsin also has the power to instigate changes in medical curricula so doctors are trained with knowledge and awareness of global health issues.
Doctors can act as a catalyst for positive change in society and as a medical student, Medsin is an ideal place to start on this. We have links with most of the major NGO’s in this field.
Medsin provides resources and contacts to help us educate ourselves about global health issues.
Everyone should have the opportunity to work on voluntary project with homeless/refugees/on a peer-led education project and Medsin can provide this.

Use the selling points you come up with in publicity, in challenges about what you’re doing, in seminars and talks, freshers fayres and even in informal chats with friends/acquaintances/in the dinner queue… tell everyone what you’re doing. Don’t keep it to yourself! Enthusiasm is infectious so don’t be shy, shun apathy and get people excited about the Medsin.

Hold events in places and at times accessible to them, think about what appeals most to different groups of people and use this to your advantage:

Get freshers involved at an early stage.
Invite people to national/international meetings, explain the ins and outs, make them feel welcome.
Conferences are a perfect way to win people over, because if well organised and inspiring, they have a big impact.

Delegation

Delegate, delegate, delegate! A great way to empower people and get them inspired:

Always thank people and be positive about what they’ve done so they’re much more likely to help out next time.
Be realistic about what people can undertake, pulling off a small campaign or project well gives instant gratification.
Actively look for your successors and think about who will take over from you. Get them prepared by giving them responsibility.

Other tips:

Let people know what’s going on with listserves, a noticeboard, a website, posters, and well planned publicity.
Take time to speak to people personally, everyone is different - what do they want out of IFMSA? How much can they take on? What are they good at and what do they enjoy?

Include the Alumni

It is worth putting a lot of effort into recruiting support from qualified doctors who can:

Help provide contacts.
Give speeches on their work with NGOs.
Talks about any aid work abroad or in homeless/refugee clinics they have done.
Training, advice and moral support from those who have done it all before.
Setting up an alumni group is a great way of keeping them all involved- a listserve, special events etc.
Could act as international health module leaders in your curriculum.
You can join this group of people in a couple of years and help to keep the work you did going.

The Final Word... The best way to make Medsin collapse is to make it dull, arduous, bureaucratic, autocratic and intimidating.

SO, ENJOY YOURSELF AND MAKE SURE THE REST OF YOUR COMMITTEE AND MEMBERS DO TOO!

Last updated on Thursday 20 December 2007 at 18:56.