Summer update

from the Undergraduate Primary Care Education Unit

Aug 01, 2023

A message from Dr Arti Maini, Director for Undergraduate Primary Care Education

Welcome to this summer’s newsletter. As I write this, the NHS 75th birthday celebrations are taking place. Things have changed radically for us all with the pandemic, with unprecedented challenges. I feel so proud that throughout this time, we are continuing to work together to develop doctors who are highly skilled, reflective practitioners, who are able to think critically and provide safe, effective, compassionate and equitable care for their patients and communities. These attributes are vital now more than ever.

Feedback shows that our students hugely value their GP placements and that these experiences positively influence their perceptions of general practice and what holistic, person-centred care really means. Thanks to you and your teams, and the patients they meet, our students are feeling valued, included, and empowered to make a difference.

In recognition of this, we are pleased that the remuneration we are able to offer has improved, with an increase to the GP tariff rate for 23/24.

Thank you for all that you do to shape the future of healthcare for our society through growing the doctors of tomorrow. A powerful legacy indeed.

Annual Teachers Conference 2023

Health Equity and Sustainable Healthcare in Medical Education

Our Annual Teachers Conference returned to campus on Friday 9^th June 2023, and it was a pleasure to see many of our colleagues from the GP community gathered together again.

This year the theme and keynote for the day was Health Equity and Sustainable Healthcare in Medical Education and we were delighted welcome our keynote speaker Dr Tamsin Ellis, London GP, Associate at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and co-chair of the national Greener Practice network

Tamsin took us through her journey to finding sustainable healthcare and how 'greening' general practice has improved her work as a GP and her care for patients as well as outlining tips for introducing sustainable healthcare principles to practices.

Click here to hear more about her work on the Four Thought programme ‘Climate Consultations’

There were a variety of workshops throughout the day to support GP tutors with CPD. These ranged from ‘turning primary care education green’ and ‘supporting students who experience discrimination’ to workshops in health coaching, student community engaged projects, and the use of poetry in medical education.

We received some excellent feedback from delegates about the best bits of their day:

“The energy is positive and gives a boost for the coming year’’

“Just being around and networking with like-minded colleagues who share the same enthusiasm and passion for teaching’’

A big thank you to all our students, community tutors and faculty who helped make the day such a success.

We also were proud to present both our students and GP tutors with awards in the second half of the day.

Read about our student winners

Read about our tutor winners

Inspire GP

Inspire GP is a new initiative from the Undergraduate Primary Care Education Team to work with medical students who are interested in pursuing a career in General Practice. Our goal is to shine a light on the many positives of working as a GP, to expand connections with those who hold an existing interest in the career and to encourage those who have not yet thought about their specialty or pathway to consider General Practice.

We are planning to hold an event in Autumn 2023 to celebrate and showcase the successes of our medical students. We would like to ask you, our community and department GP tutors, to nominate students you feel deserve recognition. You can nominate students for either a commendation or for an exceptional contribution, in instances where a student has gone above and beyond whilst on their GP placement.

Nominate a student

Community spotlight

This academic year we have expanded our community connections and made progress in weaving their valuable insight through everything we do. We also collaborate directly with community organisations such as Dalgarno Trust, QPR in the Community Trust, BME Health Forum, Hammersmith United Charities and Urban Partnership Group.

We would like to extend a huge thank you to all community organisations, GP supervisors and practice team members that support this work, and we hope that it has continued to create new opportunities and insights for you.

Read the full story

Widening access: inspiring the next generation of doctors

Widening access to healthcare professions is a key priority of the Department of Primary Care and Public Health. When a local school invited us to support their science week, we jumped at the opportunity. We saw a chance to not only support the school’s STEMM curriculum, but also for pupils to interact with doctors to understand our role and the significance of primary care, and we aimed to inspire the pupils to consider a future career in community healthcare.

School pupils created posters to display in GP practice waiting rooms to communicate key messages to the local community on healthy food choices

Working in partnership with the school teachers we co-designed and delivered a half-day workshop for 26 school pupils aged 10 to 11 on the subject of ‘Healthy Hearts’. We created a series of short, interactive and engaging stations for the pupils on topics such as the anatomy and physiology of the circulatory system where pupils explored 3D heart models, completed drawings and worksheets. Pupils took part in an interactive whole-class demonstration on how blood flows through the human body’s circulatory system. We completed the session with small group exercises exploring how blockages in the circulatory system develop and the impact this has on the body.

Read the full story

MEdIC (Medical Education Innovation & Research Centre) update

Association for the Study of Medical Education 2023 Conference

The MEdIC and Undergraduate Primary Care Education teams were well represented at the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) annual conference. The theme for the conference was “Developing a diverse workforce” and we were able to showcase several of our innovations and research projects in this area.

There were a total of 12 oral presentations, workshops and e-posters. We are very proud to have presentations from a diverse mix of our team including senior academic, early career researchers, trainees and medical students.

These included a presentation by Dr Agalya Ramanathan entitled “What are the perspectives of GP trainees on the educational value of the GP apprenticeship model?”, a workshop on “Integrating sustainable healthcare into the health professions curricula” in partnership with medical students Jaspreet Sangha and Sophie Mascarenhas, a presentation by Imperial medical student Hamza Ikhlaq on “Medical students impacted by discrimination: their experiences of sense of belonging and support systems at medical school” and a presentation by medical student Kinan Wihba on “Empowering, adequate or harmful? Ethnically minoritised medical students’ perspectives on the impact of collective terms on their learning experience”.

Selected recent MEdIC Publications

Community action projects: community-engaged quality improvement for medical students
https://doi.org/10.1080/14739879.2023.2220258
Community-engaged primary care medical education
https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.13573

We have had two publications showcasing the Community Action Project, which students in the Year 3 (1c) Medicine in the Community Apprenticeship (MICA) module complete. Many of you will have supported students through these projects over recent years. These publications showcase the high quality, breadth of topics and impact these projects have been having on local communities and patients.

The future integrated workforce
https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.13566

This article led by Dr Vanessa Sivam, provides a toolkit for medical schools and educators whoa re considering developing new curricula initiatives to meet their local and national health and workforce priorities.

Society of Academic Primary Care SE Regional Meeting

Undergraduate Primary Care Education and MEdIC hosted the South-East Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society of Academic Primary Care 2023. The conference took place online on Thursday 26 January, with over 100 participants attending the virtual conference and more than 30 attending an in person networking event.

The theme was “Health Equity for People and Planet” and we welcomed Prof Mala Rao, OBE and Dr Aarti Bansal as our keynote speakers. 

The SAPC Early Career Researcher prize was awarded to Dr Sarah Pocknell for the oral presentation on “Making visible the hidden work of medicines talk in primary care medication reviews”. 

St George's, University of London will be hosting the next SAPC SE conference in 2024.

Digital Health – What is on the horizon?

Dr Sachin Shah (GlaxoSmithKline, London) and Dr Viral Thacker (Lead for the Digital Theme of MEdIC and PCH 1 &2 module lead) took us on a digital health journey exploring ‘where we have been, where we are now, and what is coming next?’ The introduction of the Application Program Interface tool (API) in the NHS, to enable electronic healthcare records from different health settings to speak to one another, generated a sigh of relief from clinical staff in the audience.

The seminar also considered how personal health data, collected by patients, can be used and what systems may be needed within General Practice to effectively use this data. Other questions centred on the acceptability of generating health diagnoses using artificial intelligence. Whilst this provoked a range of responses, it was agreed that digital change is occurring at pace, and that there is an urgent need within our teaching and clinical practice to engage with and adapt to new digital technologies.

Team visit to Queer Britain Museum

This year our team visited the Queer Britain Museum in Granary Square that featured archive materials and artwork to preserve personal histories and celebrate the stories of queer people. The exhibition demonstrated how being queer intersected with many other aspects of identity and the importance of visibility, role modelling and leadership.

After engaging with the exhibition, team members discussed how to increase visibility of queer identities within curricula material, that embraced intersectionality and avoided stereotyping. We also discussed how increased teaching about transgender health would be beneficial both for medical students and teaching faculty.

Global Creative Competition 2023: Healthy Planet, Healthy People

The Global Creative Competition was originally launched in 2020 by MEdIC. The 2020 and 2021 competitions saw hundreds of entries from more than 50 countries.

This year’s competition is hosted as a partnership between MEdIC and the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Leeds.

This year’s theme is ‘Healthy Planet, Healthy People’ and submissions are welcomed from any student worldwide studying on an accredited programme to become a healthcare professional.

Students are asked to submit their creative responses and reflections on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a framework of the local and global priorities to create a fair, just and sustainable world by 2030. 

Imperial Undergraduate Primary Care Education

Discussion about this post