Adapting our teaching
In March 2020, the nature of UK primary care changed dramatically. GPEG needed to adapt our teaching to the rapid changes in the delivery of primary care precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, there is now a much greater reliance on triaging, e-consultations, online meetings and remote consultations. In response to these changes, GPEG undertook a programme of educational transformation that enabled us to maintain student exposure to GP-practice teaching and to ensure that our teaching content and delivery keeps pace with changes to the nature and delivery of primary care.
an excellent opportunity to improve history taking skills, note writing, prescribing etc + communication skills”
– anonymous student feedback 2022
National thought leadership on the future of work-based clinical education
GPEG’s Director, Dr Richard Darnton, has a background in teaching and assessing consultations skills (he was previously the East of England GP School consultation skills lead). This has equipped him to lead a programme of innovation and evaluation concerning remote consulting in medical education.
We were the first UK University to allow medical students based at home to consult remotely with patients (at the time, most medical schools considered this to be a “no-go”). Our scholarly evaluation of this controversial but potentially game-changing clinical education method has so far had over 7000 views and 34 citations. It was the only evidence referenced by national guidance sent to all medical schools by the Medical Schools Council. One of our key findings was that medical students could be trusted to undertake remote consultations from their own homes – allowing this teaching method to be accepted nationally.
RESEARCH: Richard Darnton, Tony Lopez, Megha Anil, Jonathan Ferdinand and Mark Jenkins Medical students consulting from home: A qualitative evaluation of a tool for maintaining student exposure to patients during lockdown. Medical Teacher 2021
GPEG went on to evaluate how the changes to primary care since the start of the pandemic have impacted the nature and value of learning medicine in this environment. We did this because there was national concern that the shift away from face-to-face consultations during GP placements would negatively impact student’s learning. Our published evaluation was the first to document the nature of learning medicine in primary care since the major changes to general practice that occurred from 2020 onward. We found that these changes to the learning environment had actually increased the educational value of each patient contact and that telephone consultations had specific benefits for medical students.
RESEARCH: Richard Darnton, Maaz Khan, Xiu Sheng Tan, Mark Jenkins. Primary care placements in the post-COVID era: A qualitative evaluation of a final year undergraduate clerkship. Medical Teacher 2022
Following this, GPEG undertook further evaluative work – this time to determine the degree to which remote consulting has become mainstream in medical education, and to explore the barriers to further uptake of medical students consulting from home. This was to our knowledge, the first study to quantify the scale of medical student involvement in telephone and video consulting. Our results also identify why some doctors may feel reluctant to supervise medical students consulting from home and suggest approaches for addressing this. It is anticipated our findings will help inform future strategic planning of medical education nationally.
RESEARCH: Richard Darnton, Sam Amey, James Brimicombe. Medical students remote consulting from home and from the health centre: a survey of prevalence and supervisor perspectives. Medical Teacher 2023
Richard’s evaluative work around remote consulting in medical education has led to him becoming respected as a national voice on the future of work based clinical education. Richard recently teamed up with an international expert on curriculum development (Judy McKimm) to share some of these views in the British Journal of General Practice.
EDITORIAL: Richard Darnton, Richard Thomson and Judy McKimm. Video consultations: a potential gamechanger in clinical education. BJGP 2022
Building a regional community of GP Educators
GPEG has held an annual GP tutor conference since 2018. Each year this gathers around 300 educators from across the region and is highly valued by attendees.
We are building on this success to explore additional ways of building a community of clinical teaching practice that can help support, inspire, and develop primary care educators.
More information about the 2025 conference will be communicated later this year.
Championing Medical Humanities at Cambridge
In 2020 GPEG hosted a gathering of Cambridge students with an interest in medical humanities.
This led to the formation of the Cambridge University Medical Humanities Society, of which the GPEG Director, Dr Richard Darnton is senior treasurer. Drawing on this society as a student reference group, GPEG has subsequently introduced optional modules in medical humanities, delivered in GP practices. Richard also leads the adjudication panel for the Cuthbert Prize for Humanities in Medicine.
I am able to think more holistically.”
– anonymous final year student feedback 2022
Horizontal Integration of Basic Medical Science: GPEG Provides Proof of Concept
GPEG delivers a pilot course for medical students in their first two years of study. Generalist clinicians help these students “put together” all their basic science learning each term as they apply it to a hypothetical case.
This is the first example of horizontally integrated learning at this stage of the Cambridge medical course and it is now provided at 7 Cambridge colleges.
I really like the style of learning where we are given a scaffold of information that we do not fully understand and that we can work on and build upon as the term/year goes on. I find it helps me retain information as there are places to put that information and things to tie it to.”
– anonymous student feedback on the pilot course
The course, called Integrated Biomedical Problem Solving, uses an innovative learning process and involves the combination of face-to-face discussion groups and an online social annotation tool called Perusall.
You can find out more about this innovative course by watching our 4-minute video: Integrated Biomedical Problem Solving (IBiPS) – YouTube.
The course has been highly rated by students, with 95% of respondents reporting that the facilitator was good or very good at enabling them to feel comfortable handling a patient case study at this stage of their training.