Professor Veena Rodrigues

Professor Veena Rodrigues
Academic Director Postgraduate Certificate in Medical Education and MSt in Medical Education, Course Director and Academic Director Postgraduate Diploma in Medical Education

Biography

I am a Course Director and Academic Director for postgraduate medical education courses at University of Cambridge Professional and Continuing Education. I have been involved in curriculum design, delivery, and assessment of undergraduate and postgraduate medical education programmes for several years, holding various senior leadership roles in Public Health and Medical Education.

During most of my career, I have held posts that were split 50:50 across service public health and academia. This enabled me to bring academic rigour to my NHS work, and real-life public health examples to my teaching. I have been clinical/educational supervisor of public health specialty registrars, and various trainees/ students doing public health placements and played an active part in the Public Health specialty training programme in this Region for several years. I co-led the national network of public health educators in UK medical schools, a group involved in developing and delivering a consensus curriculum for undergraduate public health in medical schools.

I completed my undergraduate medical training and an MD degree in Preventive and Social Medicine overseas. I have an MPhil degree in Epidemiology and Statistics from the University of Cambridge, and a Master’s degree in Clinical Education from the University of East Anglia. I completed my public health specialty training in the East of England in 2002. I am a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and Emeritus Professor of Public Health & Medical Education at Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia.  

Research topics

I am passionate about professional development and mentoring of junior educators and building professional networks to share good practice in teaching and learning. I am particularly interested in the use of technology enhanced learning in medical education and have experience of developing and delivering several types of online learning courses, including massive open online courses on the Future Learn platform. Teaching public health to undergraduate medical students can be quite challenging for various reasons. I am interested in innovative teaching methods that can make teaching interesting and engaging for our students.

Publications

Journal articles

  • Orsini C, Jennings B, Rodrigues V, Tricio J. The development of a reporting form for peer observation of online learning courses: An e-Delphi consensus study of educators working in health professions education. Eur J Dent Educ. 2023; 27: 1088-1097. doi:10.1111/eje.12902., 2023
  • Orsini C, Rodrigues V, Tricio J, Rosel M. Common models and approaches for the clinical educator to plan effective feedback encounters. J Educ Eval Health Prof. 2022;19.35. doi: 10.3352/jeehp.2022.19.35., 2022
  • Orsini C, Rodrigues V, Tricio J. Implementation and lessons learned from 2 online interprofessional faculty development programs for improving educational practice in the health professions in Chile and the United Kingdom from 2018 to 2021. J Educ Eval Health Prof. 2021;18.21. doi: 10.3352/jeehp.2021.18.21., 2021
  • Orsini, C., & Rodrigues, V. Supporting motivation in teams working remotely: The role of basic psychological needs. Medical Teacher, 2020; 42(7), 828–829. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2020.1758305., 2020
  • Ruth Plackett, Angelos P. Kassianos, Maria Kambouri, Natasha Kay, Sophie Mylan, Jenny Hopwood, Patricia Schartau, Shani Gray, Jessica Timmis, Sarah Bennett, Chris Valerio, Veena Rodrigues, Emily Player, Willie Hamilton, Rosalind Raine, Stephen Duffy & Jessica Sheringham. Online patient simulation training to improve clinical reasoning: a feasibility randomised controlled trial. BMC Med Educ 20, 245 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-02168-4., 2020
  • Semlyen J, Hariharan B, Josiah B, Okongwu K, Sowah Quarshie L, Rodrigues V. Medical schools and other educational institutions need to tackle racism head on. BMJ 2020; 370 :m2746 doi:10.1136/bmj.m2746., 2020
  • Neve, H., Hothersall, E.J. and Rodrigues, V. Exploring threshold concepts in population health. Clin Teach, 2020; 17: 292-297. https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.13087., 2020

Courses Taught