Prof Arif Rashid Khawaja is a qualified General Surgeon with a special interest in Breast and Hepatobiliary Surgery. He was trained in the UK. He has worked as Professor of Surgery at Gujranwala Medical College, Pakistan until February 2018 and is currently working in the private sector. Prof Arif has a special interest in Medical Education especially in Medical Teaching. He has a Certificate in Teaching from University of London. On his return to Pakistan, he joined University of Health Sciences, Lahore in 2009 as Advisor to the Vice Chancellor in Medical Education. The collaboration with Prof Ian Willis and Prof Janet Strivens from University of Liverpool, led to the design of a six-month certificate programme for medical teachers. This programme has been very successful and sustainable. He left the university job and decided to set up an independent Center for Integration in Learning and Teaching (CILT) in 2019. This organisation has been set up to provide a platform for developing courses for professionals involved in teaching undergraduates and postgraduates. Since the start of the certificate programme in 2011, more than 900 medical teachers have been enrolled in the province of Punjab, Pakistan. CILT has recently partnered with Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University as a constituent organisation. Prof Arif’s vision is to improve the standard of the quality of teaching in all the higher education sector of Pakistan especially and overseas generally. Dr Ian and Dr Janet, along with local colleagues, have partnered with him to make it achievable and successful. He believes that this is the missing link in the chain that connects institutional aims with student aspirations. CILT has been established to follow the vision and bring a change among teachers that shall in the end benefit the students and also improve the learning environment at the institutions. Hence all the three stakeholders, institutions, teachers and students, benefit from our efforts.

Dr. Shaila Tahir have specialized in the field of Operative Dentistry and worked at De’ Montmorency College of Dentistry for a decade. Later, I joined the private sector as I had ample clinical expertise. Since I wanted to have an insight in the art of teaching, so I decided to join the CMT program, right when it was in its infancy stage. This gave me the opportunity to find out that the practical application of medical education was worth paying heed to. It was a revelation as it was not only teaching which was important, but it was learning on the part of the student that needed some emphasis. As far as teaching and learning is concerned the concept of reflection was of utmost importance. It holds true when we say that it is not by experience that you learn, it is by reflecting on your experience that leaves a greater impact. CMT program was a practical application of medical education and it is here that I came to know that how fundamental it was to pay special attention to the problems of students. Since then I have gone on to facilitate and lead ICMT/CMT courses and so to contribute to the learning of others and hopefully to help improve things for medical and dental students in Pakistan.

Dr Janet Strivens has been visiting Pakistan since 2011, originally as part of a British Council-funded INSPIRE and subsequently under the aegis of CILT with which she is now an International Consultant. Like Dr Willis she is motivated by the enthusiasm for learning, the changes local faculty are making and the wonderful hospitality. Dr Strivens is a social scientist who has worked in a variety of education departments at UK universities. Since 1990 her main role has been as an educational/academic developer working with academic colleagues to improve the quality of learning, teaching and assessment and thereby enhance the student experience at the University of Liverpool. She has also acted in a consultancy role in many UK universities and also abroad as Senior Associate Director of the Centre for Recording Achievement, a UK-based organisation which promoted the value and practice of reflection and planning in learning. Her particular interests are in self-directed learning, assessment and curriculum design. She now lives in North Wales and continues to act as a supervisor for UoL’s online doctorate in Higher Education studies (EdD- see Dr Willis’ profile for a description). She also has a consultancy role with the European Hematology Association (EHA), sitting on the European Board for Accreditation in Hematology and advising on EHA’s educational and assessment projects. Dr Strivens’ PhD is in the field of curriculum design in Higher Education. She is a UK National Teaching Fellow, an award which recognises outstanding contributions to the field of higher education teaching and learning.

I am a woman health radiologist specialised in Breast Gynae and obstetrics scanning. I was trained in the UK and started practicing in Pakistan in a private set up. Teaching always fascinated me since childhood when I used to teach kids younger to me. I started training and teaching post graduate residents off and on but that did not satisfy the inner teacher in me until I learnt about ICMT and embarked on a journey I would like to share today. Ever since then I have been mentoring ICMT students and have gained tremendous confidence from this learning curve as I was offered to become a facilitator on the course I recently taught in Multan and got very positive feedback from most of the participants. I am very thankful to all the team at CILT for providing me this with platform and an opportunity to do what I always wanted to do. The hidden teacher in me is finally getting a chance to teach. I would strongly recommend all present and future potential medical teachers to enrol in this programme and polish their teaching skills. I loved the concept of mentorship as I had a mentor during my post graduate degree in the UK who trained me to become a breast radiologist. I was lucky to have Dr Mujtaba as my mentor in CMT. He encouraged me and guided me diligently to complete the mammoth task of compiling my portfolio which became a source of pride for me as I topped my batch in 2016.

I became part of the CMT family from the second session. Since then I have been associated with it in various capacities.
But, the mentorship program is something I feel very close to. The concept of mentorship is simple, those who have gone through it help new ones learn the trade better.
However, to me it's much more than that. Everyone has a different style of learning and everyone has a different way to expressing and teaching. That is why the portfolios are so varied and this variation makes this program unique than all the other programs. When you are helping someone, you are actually learning more than you think. Because this way, you are exposed to so many different thinking styles and expressions.
Besides, this concept of being a mentor is not alien in our life already. We've all have had teachers, seniors, class fellows or even relatives from whom we learnt a lot and look at them for inspiration. We somehow get a bit of them in our lives as we go along (intentionally or unintentionally).
This is what this mentorship program is all about. The bidirectional relation in which both are learning from each other in a different way helps us shape our teaching styles, and in some cases our lives for better.
To me the concept of a mentor is a person, who is there for you and helps you figure out concepts, problems and difficulties. When the course ends, you break off ties with facilitators, examiners and even the whole program but mentor is one person who is likely to still remain with you even after all, maybe for life

Professor Muhammad Mujtaba
MBBS; MCPS (Psychiatry); FCPS (Psychiatry)
MSc. Biological Psychiatry (UK)
Diploma Mental Health Policies & Services WHO (Portugal)
Diploma Health Professional Education (AKU)
CMT

I completed my International Certificate in Medical Teaching, ICMT (formally known as CMT) in April 2013. It was a wonderful experience. My mentor was Dr Muhammad Mujtaba, who not only mentored me in completion of my portfolio, as partial fulfilment of this certificate, but also guided me at personal level, in improving my teaching practices to leave an impact for change. This all led me to complete certification in time and with high scores. After my certificate, I was asked if I am interested in mentoring and guiding other students of ICMT. Since then I have been mentoring ICMT students. It has been a wonderful journey. People share their practices, strategies which they have adopted, their innovations in medical teaching and their experiences that how ICMT has helped them in improving their teaching skills and changed their teaching practices in a positive way. After working as a mentor for about a year, CILT team asked me if I would like to get training for become a facilitator for ICMT, which was an honour in itself. I took training in facilitation and attended all ongoing ICMT courses as an observer for about another year. At that time CILT was running an independent programme, Introduction to Medical Teaching (ICMT), which was free of cost for university students post graduate students. I was offered to run this programme as a facilitator. This facilitation as observed in person by Mr Ian Willis, Mrs Janet Striven and local facilitators. After a structured screening process, I was selected as a facilitator for ICMT. Since then I have been facilitating ICMT courses in different cities of Punjab. It has been a wonderful journey for me since then, as while facilitating it I was the one who learnt the most. ICMT is different from other certificate courses, being run in the country, as it solely focuses on changing the teaching practices. It does not teach definition or complex theories in medical education, rather it tells the learner how to change one’s practices. I used to say that correct analogy for ICMT is a driver’s license. One can have a degree in mechanical engineering but that does not guarantee of being a good driver. This is what ICMT course do, here one learns how to improve their teaching practices. ICMT also provides an opportunity to practical implement and practice the concepts being taught during the course, by reflecting them in the portfolio.

I am a physiologist and a medical educationist working at Shaikh Zayed Postgraduate Medical Institute and Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan Medical and Dental college, Lahore since the last ten years. I passionately chose teaching as a career because I wanted to have a positive impact on the learning of medical students who are tomorrow's doctors and health carers. In 2011, thanks to CMT, I realized that better than being one medical teacher trying to positively influence students' learning, I can also become trainer of medical teachers and therefore positively influence the learning of more and more medical students. My journey started with CMT at the very beginning in 2011 when the course was planned, its contents were thoroughly studied and put together, and its curriculum was designed, all under the leadership and with the vision of Prof. Dr. Arif and with continuous input and guidance from our teachers, Prof. Dr. Ian and Prof. Dr. Janet who also trained us to be facilitators. I started facilitating in CMT in 2014. It has been an enjoyable journey with all its challenges and achievements. My favourite four practices from CMT which I gradually adopted and used over the last eight years are inclusivity, facilitating students' use of critical thinking, taking students' feedback, and reflection. The first two practices helped enhancing students' learning and the last two enhanced my learning about how to keep on improving my teaching with the aim of enhancing students' learning. As a facilitator in CMT, interacting with medical teachers was a two-sided fruitful learning experience. The participants' response to the sessions has been overwhelming and the hard work and dedication they put into the Portfolios have been remarkable. Being a facilitator in ICMT program is a career I cherish because ICMT helps enhancing students' learning through improving the quality of teaching by training medical teachers. The program is unique with the type of learning environment it creates, the high standard training it gives, and the evident improvement it causes in its participants' skills.

Greg Hendren has extensive experience in faculty development and student support in higher education. Based in New Zealand, he has contributed to and led faculty development programmes for new teachers and for experienced faculty. In addition, he has wide ranging knowledge and skills in the provision of support for students (at all levels) that aims to maximise their capacity for success through individual support or targeted intervention courses. On the basis of these experiences and skills, Greg was recruited by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the University of Liverpool to design and lead an academic skills course in Damascus, Syria for health professionals (doctors, dentists and pharmacists) who were taking part in an EU funded project to prepare them for Masters level study (MHPE). The course aimed to enculturate learners into Western paradigms of learning with an emphasis on academic reading, academic writing, critical thinking and critical reflection. This led to Greg being engaged to lead the faculty development at a Bahraini Higher Education Institution. Over a five-year period, Greg developed, taught and led the programme for local and international faculty (based on a learner centred pedagogy), contributed to the associated policies, designed the faculty induction programme and was part of the institutions’ quality team operating at best international practice. Greg has worked throughout New Zealand and internationally on consultancy projects in higher education, part time university lecturing and programme reviews. His Masters in Education focused on higher education and learning theories.

I am a lecturer in the Physiology department at CMH Multan Institute of Medical Sciences. I have been teaching medical students online and on-campus since my graduation. Teaching is not merely my profession but a true passion. I aim at bringing innovation and technical evolution to the current practices of medical education. I am particularly interested in implementing and enhancing the concept of scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) among the medical fraternity.
Fortunately, I completed my International Certificate in Medical Teaching (ICMT) at the very beginning of my professional career. Since then, I have been associated with CILT via the mentor-facilitator program. Undoubtedly, ICMT has widened my horizon beyond my expectations. It has provided me with an endless opportunity to observe and learn from medical professionals with a huge diversity of experiences.
In my view, the keystone to the excellence of ICMT is its focus on self-reflection. It is admirable how it motivates an accomplished professional to indulge in a process of continuous personal and professional excellence. I highly appreciate the ideology behind ICMT that encompasses the road towards continuous professional development. I must say that ICMT ‘enables the enablers’ to the best of their potential.

Dr. Huma Saeed Khan is currently working as an Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology, CMH Lahore Medical College and IOD.
Dr. Huma is a graduate of Allama Iqbal Medical College, with a Gold Medal. She joined the basic medical sciences immediately after house job, because teaching was her passion. She continued this journey and passed M.Phil in Physiology from the University of Health Sciences, again securing a gold medal. Her journey with medical education started with the 1st batch of this certificate course in UHS, in the year 2011. Since then, she has grown professionally and believes that the knowledge and skills acquired through CMT have changed her way of thinking and practicing teaching. She thinks that the main strength of this course is the fact that it takes into account the local problems and local solutions in medical education, instead of a precooked model adapted from foreign universities.
Dr. Huma is currently enrolled as a Ph.D. Scholar at UHS, and continues to teach both MBBS and BDS undergraduate students. She believes that it is never too late to change, and that it is always helpful to acquire the basic skills of medical education early in the career. She believes that research in medical education can be used to find the areas that need improvement, both at individual level and at institutional level. She encourages both junior and senior colleagues to enroll in this course and be a part of the ethos of ICMT: Finding the hidden teacher inside You!