Usman Ahmed

I am a consultant trauma & orthopaedic surgeon at Worcester Acute Hospitals NHS Trust in the West Midlands. In 2020 as the pandemic started I was the training programme director for core surgical training educational programme in the West Midlands. The first lockdown led me to build the Surgical Virtual Learning Environment for 110 CSTs in vulnerable training posts. Success in this initial endeavour led to expansion to first all of surgery (450 trainees) and then all of medicine leading to rapid growth.

By December 2020 we had capacity for 5000 users, and this grew to its 15000 capacity today. The rebranded PGVLE caters for all programmes in all specialties for all manner of healthcare professionals. Our aim is to facilitate organised teaching in the online sphere in a manner consistent with the culture norms of every group.