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Primary care — Year 3 and 4 course requirements

Below are the requirements for GP placements during the Year 3 and Year 4 rotation blocks.

Leading on consultation

  • 3-4 sessions each week should be spent with students leading on consultations with patients. Please see the GP Tutor Handbook for advice on clinical supervision.
  • Consultations can be face-to-face, telephone, or video consultations, although we prefer that the majority are face-to-face. Each pair of Student Doctors should aim to lead on consultations with approximately 9-12 patients per week, on average, over the placement. Students will need approximately 20 minutes to take a focused history and examination before presenting the case to you. The GP Tutor will then need to discuss diagnosis and management with the patient. All patients seen by Student Doctors will require formal clinician review.

Surgery observations

  • 2-3 sessions sitting in and observing a GP surgery with the opportunity to become involved in clinical examinations and engage in case discussion. This could occur in pairs or individually with different practitioners. If telephone consulting with a patient please ensure telephone consultations are audible to Student Doctors and ensure consent is given by the patient for Student Doctors to observe, just as you would for a face-to-face consultation.

Experience of the Primary Healthcare team

  • 1-2 sessions per week with another health care professional – including Practice Nurses, GP trainees, Health Care Assistants, District Nurses, Community Midwife, Health Visitor, Community Physiotherapist or others as appropriate. This could occur in pairs or individually with different professionals.

Educational supervision

  • The GP tutor will act as the student’s Educational Supervisor for their GP placement.
  • Please visit the Educational Supervisors section for more details.

Mandatory experiences

These are essential activities that the Student Doctors MUST experience during the placement. They can occur in pairs or individually. They should be achievable within the 4 weeks of the placement as they are commonplace aspects of a practice’s daily and weekly activity.

Each should be followed by an in formal debrief or discussion with a GP. Their reflection will be documented in their e-portfolio.

For further details on these mandatory experiences please see the GP Tutor Handbook which has been emailed directly to Tutors and Practice Managers. Please be aware the experiences are different for each year group.