GP Teaching

by Dr Nicky Hawkins and Dr Nina Dutta

Since 2017, the Widening Access to Community Careers in Healthcare (WATCCH) programme has hosted over 100 individuals from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds who are interested in a career in healthcare. The programme aims to support young people in making informed career choices, raise their aspirations and facilitate access to healthcare careers. Previous participants having gone on to take up offers on a wide range of healthcare-related degrees; amongst others, these include Dentistry, Nursing, Audiology, Biomedical Sciences, Pharmacy, Psychology, Radiography, Neuroscience and Medicine.

The 2019/20 WATCH programme has supported 40 students with primary care work experience and educational workshops, including multi-professional healthcare panel question and answer sessions and admissions workshops including personal statements and mock Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) circuits. This year’s programme has also included a mentoring scheme, whereby WATCCH participants are linked to current Imperial College School of Medicine (ICSM) student volunteers that have received training in coaching and mentoring.  As the 2019/20 WATCCH programme comes to an end, our online closing event will focus on preparing students for the transition to life in higher education via a practical introduction to coaching, led by Dr Arti Maini, and talks spanning mentors’ ‘top tips’ on finances, accommodation, study skills and student welfare.

Looking ahead to 2020/21, we are committed to delivering a valuable WP programme despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.  Applications are now open (until 27/06/2020) to eligible students as we begin to plan an innovative series of interactive online workshops accompanied by remote student mentoring. Using technology to our advantage we hope to expand the online programme to accommodate a higher number of students across the UK and also collaborate with a wider range of healthcare professionals. Evaluation of the programme also continues via the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) and the Medical Education and Research Innovation Centre (MEdIC) based within Undergraduate Primary Care Education Team in the School of Public Health. As well as evaluating the programme from the perspective of student participants, we are also interested in the impact of near-peer WATCCH mentoring on the personal and professional development of mentors themselves.

Once again, we would like to thank all of the student participants, schools, teachers, and our Imperial WATCCH mentors for the enthusiasm and dedication that they bring to the programme.

Quote from student in the current WATCCH 2019/20 cohort:

“The WATCCH programme was fantastic in helping me secure medical school offers by firstly providing a week of general practice work experience. This was a valuable opportunity to shadow healthcare staff that could be included in my personal statement and discussed in the interview. There was a focus on reflective learning following the GP placement and then there was helpful support in the personal statement as well as practice MMI mock interviews. These sessions overall strengthened my medical school application by improving my confidence at every stage of the UCAS application process.”

For further information on WATCCH, please go to https://www.imperial.ac.uk/school-public-health/primary-care-and-public-health/teaching/widening-access-to-careers-in-community-healthcare/

Read WATCCH: Widening Access to Community Careers in Healthcare 2019/20 in full

by Dr Nicky Hawkins, Dr Nina Dutta, Dr Neepa Thacker and Dr Arti Maini

The Undergraduate Primary Care Education Team leads on the delivery of a wide range of courses across the six years of the Imperial MBBS programme. On March 14^th 2020, the medical school announced the suspension of all face-to-face undergraduate clinical placements in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. With major implications for two of our key primary care courses – Year 3 Medicine In the Community Apprenticeship (MICA) and Year 5 General Practice and Primary Healthcare (GPPHC) – we were tasked with the rapid conversion of these face-to-face clinical attachments into courses that could be developed and delivered entirely remotely.

Traditionally, both MICA and GPPHC are centred around medical students observing and assisting doctors in an authentic clinical environment, regularly engaging in meaningful interactions with patients themselves. The team therefore sought to capture the complexities of this learning environment, ensuring that we were adequately addressing the educational needs of our students. Here we describe and reflect on selected key components of the digital MICA and GPPHC courses, sharing some of the lessons learned from our students along the way.

Large group live webinars. Alongside other webinars, both MICA and GPPHC digital courses incorporated weekly live ‘Case Rounds’; webinars centred around clinical cases and questions, circulated to students in advance. Attended by up to 140 students, interactivity was integral to these webinars and maintained by actively encouraging students to submit questions and answers via the ‘chat’ and utilising real-time voting applications such as Mentimeter. Student feedback on live webinars in general was overwhelmingly positive. It was interesting to hear them repeatedly describe feeling liberated to interact more freely, due to the anonymity of the online format; it appeared to create a more inclusive environment for students whilst retaining engagement and learning value.

“I like this format because I feel more comfortable to engage and interact compared to face to face. Makes it feel safe knowing that we can contribute without other students knowing it’s me giving that answer…I felt more engaged and switched off less. I think it’s a good idea which should be incorporated more for future years.” Year 3 MICA student

Small-group history taking sessions. Recognising the need for peer-peer interaction, and a platform to actively promote development of students’ consultation skills, both MICA and GPPHC held history taking sessions using Zoom’s breakout room function to facilitate interactive small-group work. This enabled role-play of a range of primary care scenarios. Students rated the session highly, commenting on the value of real-time personalised feedback from both tutors and their peers.

 “It was a good opportunity to socially connect with colleagues remotely and undertake some peer-to-peer learning.” Year 5 GPPHC student

Self-study e-learning resources. Alongside timetables of live sessions, an online package of learning materials mapped to core curriculum content was made available to both MICA and GPPHC cohorts, combining internally created resources and external resources that had been quality assured by the team. Well received by students, this was available to access remotely in their own time, at their own pace, promoting asynchronous online learning.

As a team, we have rapidly upskilled in our digital capabilities to deliver innovative online learning across a range of formats.  It is exciting to pause and reflect on what has been achieved in such a short space of time. We have also had the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in Melbourne University who have been leading a similar radical change to digital delivery of medical education. This collaboration has led to shared learning and innovation, which has led to a acceptance of a joint publication in The Clinical Teacher.

Drawing on the valuable lessons learned, we are looking to develop these digital course components further as we approach the start of the new academic year. Although students will be returning to clinical placements, it is clear there will remain an important role for digital learning strategies alongside more traditional placement teaching.

Read Digital learning: lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic in full

We are delighted that Dr Nina Dutta is the recipient of this year’s Imperial President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Nina’s commitment to promoting excellence, diversity and inclusion has driven her outstanding work in education. She has taken core values of education and social justice into the very heart of how she provides leadership, promoting an inclusive culture for students, faculty, patients and wider community.

Nina is the Lead for the Year 3 undergraduate Medicine in the Community (MICA) course, Diversity and Inclusion lead for MEdIC (Medical Education Innovation and Research Centre), Deputy Lead for Faculty Development, and Lead for the team’s Widening Access to Community Careers in Healthcare (WATCCH) programme which is open to all year-12 secondary school students from diverse and challenging backgrounds who are interested in healthcare. She also continues to work clinically as a GP in London and applies this experience to all her educational roles.

Nina’s leadership of MICA has transformed the experience for Imperial students, faculty and our wider local community, and the course receives outstanding student feedback every year. She has developed teaching materials to support community GPs with innovative tutorials and support students to learn about patients’ holistic health needs. She has also led on developing on-campus and community tutorials for her year 3 students. Nina has developed a unique suite of trans-disciplinary specialty choice options within MICA, so students can experience cutting-edge aspects of medicine including Medicine in the Media, Digital Health Futures, Health Coaching, Yoga and Mindfulness, preparing our future doctors to navigate the evolving and broad healthcare landscape.

Her students clearly value her work, and as one student comments:

“I think Dr Dutta has delivered to us some of the best teaching we’ve received at Imperial. She’s an incredibly engaging teacher and always gives us highly relevant teaching sessions. She also makes a lot of effort to build relationships with all her students, which we all notice.”

It is of no surprise that she has also been nominated by her students for this year’s Imperial College Student Union ‘Student Choice’ awards.

Nina has led development of the Community Action Project that all year 3 students undertake to identify and address a community need. Examples have included projects to increase access to healthcare for people who are homeless as well as people from Black and Minority Ethnic communities and to co-create video-based resources with members of the Arab community aimed at raising awareness within this community of mental health conditions and reducing the stigma associated with these. Through Nina’s exemplary mentorship, students have presented at conferences and published in peer-reviewed publications, winning numerous awards offered by the RJGP, The King’s Fund and Royal Society of Medicine.

As Faculty Development Deputy Lead, Nina directly influences the teaching practices of hundreds of GP tutors. She and her team have developed robust quality assurance methods to provide support and mentorship for tutors. She also applies her ability to develop robust and inclusive education by delivering regular teacher training RCGP accredited courses (TACTIC and ASTIC), contributing to our student’s positive student experience whilst they are on community placements.

Nina’s President’s Award is richly deserved and we are grateful for all her work in supporting and inspiring students, tutors and colleagues, developing innovative curricula and promoting a diverse, inclusive workforce.

Read Dr Nina Dutta scoops coveted President’s Award in full

A few weeks ago the Medical school took the difficult decision along with the rest of the country, to suspend all clinical placements and on campus teaching for the rest of this academic year. Over the past few weeks the UG Primary Care team have worked at pace to convert all primary care tutorial teaching and clinical experience in local practices to a digital online format.

Dr Nina Dutta and Dr Neepa Thacker have tirelessly worked on this mammoth task and led two teams to create literally in days, full timetables of online learning for the students to work from. The teams have held student webinars from their living rooms and even managed to hold small group zoom tutorials, checking in with the students with their on-going learning and also importantly to check how the students are doing themselves.

The Medical School has also made the difficult decision to suspend all clinical examinations. Of note they held the first of its kind remote open book exit exam for the final year students. This similar format will be rolled out in the next few months for the year 3 and 5 clinical exams. As many of you may have also read, many of our final year students have taken up the opportunity to graduate early, to help serve on the NHS frontline in the next few weeks.

The Undergraduate Primary Care team has been working hard to also set up ICSM-C led by Dr Ravi Parekh and Ms Nadine Engineer, the community arm of the medical school-volunteering programme. We plan to induct and link together a small army of medical students with local GP practices, where the students will be able to support vulnerable patients at home by remotely calling them, delivering medications and following up on their chronic disease management as many if the primary care staff are being diverted to COVID-19 duties. We plan to evaluate the impact of this unique scheme, by looking at the impact on the students, patients and GP practices.

This is an uncertain and stressful time for us all, and as a department we have been keen that we try to continue to maintain some normality with working from home, holding meetings remotely and team wellbeing sessions where possible. The UG Primary care team have been a great source of support to each other and also to myself, as we have very abruptly moved to a very new way of working and teaching our students in the midst of a national crisis.

Thank you to everyone in Undergraduate Primary Care, we are lucky to have each and every one of you.

Read An update from Undergraduate Primary Care Education in full

A meridian line is an imaginary circle that passes through the earth’s surface to connect the poles. The prime meridian line runs to within two miles of Madingley, Cambridge. Many of you will be familiar with the beautiful Madingley Hall, where the annual SAPC SE meeting is held in January. Once again, members of the Primary Care Undergraduate Teaching team attended.

This year’s theme was “Academic Primary Care: Optimising Impact”. Our team shared the following impactful projects from the department:

• F-zero – a longitudinal integrated clerkship for final year medical students – Dr Neha Ahuja (OOPE 2018-2019) and Dr Nicky Hawkins (OOPE 2019-2020)
• A primary school based service learning programme  – Dr Rachel Pilling (GPST2  Feb-Aug  2019)
• How mindfulness training can build community teachers’ skill – Dr Camille Gajria

The conference was a succinct way to broaden one’s thinking on topical medical education issues. One of the keynotes was an entertaining and sobering talk by Prof Robbie Foy, a world leader in implementation research, and a GP.  85% of health research is wasted¹, for multiple reasons including being not contextual enough. For example, when validated tools for depression screening are used in real life, ethnographic studies showed they can become a tick-box exercise and reduce the quality of the consultation for all. He called for more collaborative research implementation that takes account of what happens in real life rather than under study conditions. As general practice educators, I think this pragmatic view of impact is what we try to move our students towards.

The hosting Cambridge team expertly organised it to be an egalitarian, enabling event. Attending SAPC SE was like standing on a meridian, connecting educational research to our teaching practice, and catching up with colleagues while being inspired by new connections.

¹     Chalmers I, Glasziou P. Avoidable waste in the production and reporting of research evidence. Lancet. 2009 Jul 4;374(9683):86-9.

Read SAPC Regional Conference 2020, Madingley in full

by Roya Hassanzadeh and Jenna Mollaney

Our ageing and diverse population requires doctors to understand the broad sociocultural context of health, and to work collaboratively with local communities to address health needs and reduce our health inequities. During year 3, as part of their 10-week Medicine in the Community Apprenticeship (MICA), students complete a Community Action Project (CAP). This provides an excellent opportunity for our medical students to learn important skills in health improvement and making a real difference on the ground with communities while on clinical placements.

Working in pairs to assess local community needs and deliver and evaluate a sustainable healthcare intervention using quality improvement principles, students are encouraged to engage with members of the community (including patients, community groups, third sector organisations and health professionals). The projects are peer-assessed at a CAP presentation morning at the end of the placement where students present a poster in their pair detailing their project to their peers and then mark each other’s work.

Examples of CAP projects include a pair of students who recognised the ethnic diversity of their local population, which meant that local patients were unable to understand any health-related literature which was being provided by the doctors due to their limited English language. After engaging the local clinical commissioning group (CCG) and patient groups, they developed an online website where patient condition leaflets were translated into variety of languages. The initiative has been so successful, neighbouring areas are interested in the students working with their communities.

In another example, one pair of students identified a lack of uptake of the cervical smear screening program in their local GP practice population. After discussing this with patients, they identified a lack of awareness amongst the patients as a key driver. They engaged a local women’s cancer charity, and a Gynaecology Consultant from the local hospital to deliver an educational evening where local patients were invited to attend and learn about gynaecological malignancies and how they can be prevented.

The Community Action Project has allowed our students to engage in meaningful community engagement and make real impact on the health and welfare of the communities in which they are working. The Undergraduate Education Primary Care team are now carrying out research addressing the impact of the projects on both the student learning experience and impact on local communities.

Read Community Action Project in full

This summer the Undergraduate Primary Care Education Team are delighted to welcome students to the third year of our innovative widening access programme, WATCCH (widening access to careers in community healthcare). WATCCH supports young people from diverse and deprived backgrounds who are keen to pursue a career in healthcare. Our WATCCH students are enjoying learning about a diverse range of healthcare careers via campus-based education days and work experience in the primary care setting. This year, we have partnered with the student society Vision who are offering mentoring for our WATCCH students, following bespoke coaching and mentoring training from our in-house coaching lead. We will be running a series of student-led mentoring workshops throughout the year on topics including admissions tips, finances and personal skill development.

This popular programme supported by HEE NWL, has hosted one hundred students over the last three years and has sparked interest in universities nationally.  Our evaluation to date shows that WATCCH increased students’ awareness of the range of healthcare careers available and has generated new thinking about career options. The programme also increased participants’ self- confidence in their ability to pursue their career choice, and importantly has given students access to relatable healthcare professional role models increasing their drive and motivation to join the healthcare workforce.

We look forward to expanding WATCCH further in upcoming years and would like to thank all the schools, teachers, Imperial College students, and our WATCCH students for the enthusiasm and dedication they bring to the scheme.

WATCCH sits within the Diversity and Inclusion theme of the newly-established Medical Education and Research Innovation Centre (MEdIC) based within Undergraduate Primary care Education Team in the School of Public Health. MEdIC aims to translate the medical education evidence-base into robust educational innovations and research which strengthen our medical workforce and have a sustainable, equitable and transformational impact on society.

For further information on WATCCH, please contact n.dutta@imperial.ac.uk

Read WATCCH 2019 (Widening Access to Careers in Community Healthcare) in full

by Ashleigh Sahota, Undergraduate Medical Student

We attended the RCGP (Royal College of General Practitioners) annual conference in Liverpool, during the 3 days we learnt about not only being a GP but about patient communication and social health more widely. We submitted our project from the Year 3 Community Action Project and were so pleased that it got accepted for display at the conference. Our Community Action Project aimed to encourage patients to take more ownership of their medications and allergies. As well as talking about our project and answering spectators’ questions, we also attended a variety of talks about patient-centred communication, social inequalities of health and working effectively in groups. These talks gave me lots to think about in terms of medical school but also in my career and being a trustworthy Doctor. Also, it enabled me to think about General Practice in a new way as I met so many GPs who were doing such a wide range of things as part of their job for example: working in the military, working with a sports team, have a special interest in a particular field and being a Partner. This variety of choices has made me consider General Practice as something I would want to do in the future as well as GPs being directly involved with the community. A particular highlight for Sarah and I was the talk given by Professor Michael Marmot about his research into the inequalities of health in our society, this was very eye opening and made us reflect on things we haven’t thought about during medical school so far.

Read Our experience of the RCGP conference in full

The brand new PCH (Patients, Communities and Healthcare) boat officially set sail from the harbour with a tutor introduction evening on 7th October. Representatives from over half of the GP PCH tutors’ practices attended to give their thoughts on this exciting new course for our first year students, and we worked together to explore how to make PCH work for everyone (patients, practices, students and faculty). We are delighted that the course launch has been received so positively by both practices and our new first year students.

To those unfamiliar with PCH, The PCH module runs across years 1 and 2 of the medical school curriculum. Its aim is to integrate the biological, psychological and social aspects of health, illness and disease, and explore how these impact on patient experiences and on health outcomes.

The start of the course involves a couple of interactive lectures to orientate the student to sociological concepts, hearing from a patient sharing their experience of health/illness, exploration of the NHS structure and logistics of the course. The students then visit their allocated GP practices on eight Thursdays spaced from November till March. During these days, the students will:
• visit patients in their own home (who are invited on criteria including whether the practice feels the patient would benefit from these visits)
• conduct a survey project of local patients exploring healthcare satisfaction or perception of health
• practice starting real consultations with patients during GP clinics
• discuss and reflect on their experiences in small group tutorials
They are assessed through a range of workplace based assessments and through the survey project.

PCH has been designed to serve the needs of the whole community, including patients, practices, students and faculty. Its development has been informed by feedback from GP tutors, students and patient representatives. We look forward to updating you with how it progresses. Many thanks to the whole PCPH team for their help with this, including Sonia, Arti, Michael, Jenna and Nadine, and a special thanks to Dr Libby Pearson for her input.

Read Launch of the New Patient, Communities and Healthcare Course in full

The Imperial College student GP Society were awarded the ‘most improved GP society’ award at the annual RCGP Inspire awards 2019.

Additionally the Undergraduate Primary Care Education team were shortlisted for the ‘Outstanding Teaching in General Practice’ award in recognition of the team being one of the UK-leading sites in the development of longitudinal placements, both in GP and integrating primary and secondary care. The team focuses on the delivery and expansion of undergraduate primary care community teaching, harnessing the skills of GP teaching fellows within the team to design and develop innovative new community teaching placements which have impacted positively on the student experience.

These awards celebrate the invaluable contribution of RCGP members and the difference they make to better general practice.

The awards ceremony was held in Liverpool at the iconic Anfield football stadium, and was attended by Dr Nina Dutta, Ms Nadine Engineer and Mr Steve Platt.

Read Royal College of GPs ‘Inspire’ awards in full