In academic year 24-25 students will have 12 Wednesday mornings in a GP practice in either semester 1 or 2. This is an increase from 6 sessions in 23-24 academic year and reflects how much these sessions are valued.

Students will be in groups of 6, and you will have the same students for the 12 sessions. The students will be spending the rest of the week in a hospital in the same Trust area.

£355 per session - 12 sessions each semester - £4260 per term (an increase of £105 per session compared to 23-24) 

Key activities on placement 

• Students should get the chance to speak to patients, but the focus is on their communication skills. These can be pre-arranged "cold cases" such as CDM or complex co-morbidities 

• Ideally students should all get the chance to do at least 1 Home visit (though not mandatory). It could be to a care home. 

• Students can do practical tasks such as ECGs, taking blood, dipping urines, etc 

• Students can phone patients e.g.  

• to check how someone is post hospital admission (holistic conversation and gathering information) 

• to check ref medication compliance or to notify of a change in meds 

• to give health promotion advice e.g. raised cholesterol 

Structure of the Wednesday morning 

• The students should be met at agreed time (can be 9 or if easier can be 9:15 or 9:30) 
• They should be there til 1pm 
• Ideally 12-1pm should be the group teaching/feedback slot. The 6 get together and at least 1 presents a case. The others can share what they have seen that day 
• Teaching topic can be linked to something clinical they saw or perhaps something around how the Gp team works 

FAQs 

• The 12-1pm teaching slot can be rotated between the GPs  
• You can take students in semester 1 or 2 or ideally both 
• 6 students all at once may sound daunting, but they should work in pairs and ideally rotate around activities (a bit like the year 4 programme before C25 introduced) 

• There is a model timetable with lots of suggested activities, but it can be adapted to suit the practice in terms of who is working on a Wednesday and room availability. I have developed it based on feedback from those who have been taking year 3 
• Students can also do self-directed stuff (for short periods) and it is helpful to share them out across the team (PM, PBP, PN. MDT if available) 
• There is very little in terms of admin, sign off and it can be shared between GPs 
• There is no preparation required by the GP in advance or curriculum to cover formally 
• If you are taking year 5 students in block 3, they finish on 24th Feb and so there would only be 3 Wednesdays when they would overlap. They could help with Year 3 teaching 
• The year 3 students finish 2 weeks earlier than year 4 or 5 students in December 

What worked well from Tutors (all feedback from Autumn 2023) 

• Sitting in during face to face or telephone consultation with GP 
• History taking by phone in adjacent room from GP triage list after consent 
• Suitable patient brought in or planned home visit for longer discussion 
• Consulting with pre-selected patients COLD (recent hospital admissions or investigations) 
• “shadow” treatment room nurse to take bloods, ECGs 
• Discuss blood results and what to do next 
• Discuss safeguarding and importance of record keeping 
• “shadow” HCA to take bloods 
• “shadow” pharmacist (including inhaler technique, PFR) 
• “shadow” health visitor doing vaccinations, child health surveillance 
• Visit healthy living centre (with other senior students) 
• Time with practice manager to get overview of patient triage/care navigation 

Specific tutor comments (Autumn 2023) 

The focus is primarily on teaching whereas with 4/5th years it’s patients first then teaching in any snippets of time you have.  

They have a level of enthusiasm too which you just must capture and encourage and hope that they will be inspired to consider GP as a career or at least be sympathetic to primary care if they go into secondary care.  

Ideal to have a bank of willing patients and it’s something that with plenty of forward thinking could be developed. Perhaps a leaflet at the flu clinic for patients willing to sign up to be volunteers for the students 

Only issue with 3rd year, though no fault of their own, their knowledge is limited. They are keen to learn though 

I prefer to use the resource of the normal booked surgery rather than have to plan sessions with particular well-disposed patients  

A change from the mundane and good for students to see what we do in General Practice... quite a few have said they had believed media that Gps weren't seeing anyone and were only doing telephone consults...  

We held a Year 3 Practice Manager update for Year 3 practices on 29th November 2023. You can view the recording and the presentation below

Year 3 PM Update video recording

Year 3 PM Update Nov 2023 Presentation 

April 2024 PM Info YR3.pptx - presentation for PMs year 3 

The student and tutor guide for 23-24 is available at this link. Year 3 Tutor and Student Guide. The 24-25 guide will be posted here when available

For more information or enquiries please email louise.sands@qub.ac.uk

We are using Virtual Primary care as a teaching resource for Year 3. You can find information on how to login to the website in the document below. You need a QUB email account to access the resources. Here is the playlist with accompanying resources that the students can use

VPC Information

Home Visit Practice Guide

The tutor training session for Year 3 was recorded and is available below alongside the presentation

Year 3 GP Placement Tutor Training September 2023

Video recording of Tutor meeting 05092023