The following document has been created directly from collating student feedback on Medicine in Society 1

These are activities that students regarded very positively

The three most common comments are that students want lots of patient contact, well-organised days and that they value visits to helpful community organisations

  • Regular, frequent patient contact
    • They often report (particularly towards the start of the year) that they appreciate thinking about the questions to ask patients beforehand, e.g. brainstorming as a group with the tutor facilitating
    • Home visits
    • Seeing real life clinical appointments
    • Students are happy to see patients in groups as long as there is good facilitation and each student has a role, e.g. one takes the history, another makes notes, another cosntructs timeline, others observe and throw in extra questions
  • Clearly communicated structure and organisation to the days
    • Ensure there is a clear activity for everyone, e.g. some students practising clinical skills whilst others interview a patient
    • Group discussion/brainstorm at the beginning of the day to establish everyone's baseline knowledge
    • Written timetable for the days
    • Written guidance for reflective log, including markscheme
    • Written guidance for poster presentation, including markscheme. To be clear about poster expectations from early in the year so students have time to prepare
    • Good communication between GP tutor and community tutor to ensure no duplication in the day
  • Community visits (examples below)
    • Special needs school
    • Food bank
    • District nurses
    • Homeless shelter
    • Midwife-led birth centre
    • Jewish community centre
    • Elderly care home
    • Multiple sclerosis centre
    • Stroke charity centre
    • Alzheimer's society
    • Youth care home
    • Local gym
    • Local community garden centre

There are a number of other activities that students have found helpful:

  • Regular variation in learning activities
    • facilitated peer-to-peer discussion and debriefing
    • Moral/ethical debates
    • Real life cases and examples to talk through
    • Role plays
    • Practical demonstrations of clinical skills
  • Feedback
    • Frequent and constructive feedback on the learning log
    • Evidence that tutors are responsive to feedback during the placement
    • Debriefing with tutors after meeting with patients
    • Being given an opportunity to discuss how they (students) would prefer teaching to be delivered
    • One-to-one meetings with the tutor to exchange feedback
  • Getting different members of the practice team to teach students. They particularly appreciate junior doctors or medical students from more senior years
  • Free lunch!

These are some of the activities that students found less helpful

  • Days of discussion with no patient contact
  • No opportunity to speak with patients individually - all patient contact done as a group
  • Lectures
  • Long lunch breaks with no clear tasks
  • Non-constructive or no feedback on the learning logs
Last modified: Wednesday, 15 August 2018, 3:22 PM