Imperial College London Primary Care

’Oh I do like to be beside the seaside’’ It was after squeezing into another packed London tube on a Friday evening that I saw the email ping into my mobile phone. ‘Cumbrian and North Yorkshire GP Trainee Fellowships for ST3s.’ The opportunity to transfer your training for 4-6 months in one of the most beautiful parts of the UK, a quick google of Saltburn- by –the- Sea and I was instantly sold. I transferred my training from ( Imperial GP Speciality Training Scheme- Marylebone Health Centre) to ( Durham and Tees Valley VTS- Huntcliff Surgery, Saltburn) in April, and have loved every minute. My Practice Huntcliff surgery was a stone’s throw from the beach, and a short drive to the breath taking North Yorkshire Moors. Work life balance is emphasised by the practice and I have been able to find time to join a running club, Tai Chi and walk every day. I’m cycling to home visits and enjoying a much more outdoor lifestyle. I’m also really enjoying working in a close k...

Our Annual Teachers Conference this year took place on the 8th of June at Charing Cross. It was a truly inspirational day and for those delegates (and Department staff) who have been to many ATCs, it was one that will stick in the memory as one of the biggest and best ever! This year’s theme was “teach one, train one, keep one”, focussing on inspiring the next generation of future GPs and ensuring that being involved in undergraduate education can help to futureproof your practice. The day was kicked off by Sonia Kumar, celebrating her 5th ATC as our Director, making us think about the challenges of complexity within the specialty of General Practice and explaining how we as a community team are meeting the challenge educationally. As always, her personal story of her father’s navigation of the complex care system illustrated the message of the conference so vividly. Our keynote speaker, NB Medical’s own Dr Simon Curtis delivered a tour de force in his address to conference. His presen...

We had the pleasure of welcoming Prof Hirsh from Harvard Medical School to Imperial College this month. Prof Hirsh is a world leader in Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships (LICs), which are a new design of medical education which move away from block rotational placements to a placements which are integrated across specialties with the common thread of continuity of the students with supervisors, peers and patients. In the department we now have two longitudinal courses, the 10 – week Medicine in the Community Apprenticeship in Year 3, and the Integrated Clinical Apprenticeship in year 5. These courses have been designed and adapted using the literature base of LIC, and following our visit last year to Harvard. During his visit, Prof Hirsh joined us in discussions on how we are developing new curricular ideas around LIC and how the learning from these courses are also helping to shape the ongoing curriculum review in the Medical School. We were also delighted to be able to p...

Thanks to Dr. Maham Stanyon and her connection with the UK-Japan GP Network, I was delighted to visit Imperial Primary Care Department in April. As a Japanese GP trainee being exposed to primary care in the UK, every single day was filled with surprise and I would like to share some of my thoughts on your newsletter. Abington Medical Centre/Crown Street Surgery This was my first occasion to visit UK surgeries and I was amazed by how differently we work as GPs in the UK and in Japan. I was very impressed by how GPs in the UK act as strict gatekeepers working “under pressure not to refer” and how the flow of all the patients is tightly controlled under appointment systems. This is totally different from Japan where patients have choices to visit GPs or any specialty clinics any time without making an appointment. I imagine that being in charge of thousands of patients at each surgery must be an enormous workload for all the GPs in the UK but I could see that this is made possibl...

But this time the school came to us…. We are three final year Imperial College medical students who have just completed our elective in medical education with the Imperial College Primary Health Care Department. Throughout our time one of the concepts we focused on was social accountability; how we could better our approach as medical students and as a university to improve medical outreach. Medical outreach plays an essential role in the pursuit of good public health. Not only is it important to educate the public on simple yet vital pieces of medical knowledge, it is a very effective way of inspiring the next generation to become tomorrow’s doctors. Underpinning medical outreach is the philosophy of social accountability in medical schools, a concept which describes the importance of medical schools catering to the health needs of their community, both in healthcare and education. At Imperial, societies such as ICSM Vision do fantastic work in the local community and make ...

‘HANDS ON’ Could you tell the foot bones from the hand bones by touch, not sight? Do you know exactly where the spleen is located in the abdomen? Lots of keen children and their families now do….. they came in a never-ending stream to our stall at the Imperial festival. Notwithstanding the wet and cold over the weekend of the 28-29th April South Kensington was thronged with people touring the many stands and food stalls. Our stall, Game of Bones, was incredibly imaginatively set up by Noosheen Bashir and Maria Amasanti – we had a model of the human body with organs to take out and replace and bags of bones to feel and identify and then match against the skeleton. A team of our colleagues took turns to quiz the children and challenge the adults. Much delight and surprise was experienced by us all. Do come next year. It is a great event.

Another year of the ICA has come and gone so quickly. For those who have been GP tutors for our lucky students this year, may I congratulate you. You have done a sterling job! Two weeks ago, we had our student reflective work presentation afternoon with many Department and College Senior Faculty attending. The creativity shown and the way the students demonstrated commitment to their patients within the work was a true testament to the power of longitudinal apprenticeships. As our new cohort starts at the end of July, we look to continue the work of LICs at Imperial, feeding forward to a new project in Year 6 starting in 2019, which links to the ICA in its principles of student empowerment and authentic learning through patient caseloads. However, the Year 6 course will act more as an ‘F Zero’ year, where the students will work in both primary and secondary care as part of the team, having an authentic role in the healthcare teams. This course is set to be initially piloted at Northwic...

This year was the second year that our Medicine in the Community apprenticeship ran for 150 third year medical students. It was a great success with excellent student and community teacher feedback. The course has developed significantly since it was started in 2016. With a timetable packed full of centralised teaching, mini speciality choice modules and experience sessions over the ten weeks, we listened to our students who were wanting MORE time in their practices with their teams and patients. We therefore reduced the number of sessions out of the practice and gave them more free space to reflect and learn from the wealth of opportunity gained just by being in their own surgery. The students enjoyed feeling like they were really part of a team, not only learning through meaningful patient contact as front line members of staff, but becoming embedded in the daily running of a practice where they made a real difference. They got to know their fellow team members and enjoyed being i...

Medics in glasses, hats and coats There is rain and sun and snow to bear So we put on different hats to wear. There is cold and ice all around So our coats keep us safe from that surround. The letters we achieve written after our name Legitimises our right to play a role in a game. We strive towards achieving a form of identity, But fundamentally we are all just an entity. The value of freedom is one we endorse But we strip it away with the layers we enforce. Freedom to practice requires freedom to feel. Without being able to feel how can we heal? There is suffering we see and sadness we hear, So we close our eyes and close our ears. We hang our weapons round our neck in order to try To shield ourselves from anyone getting close by. The breath and heart sounds we hear and decipher so well, Are disconnected from people with stories to tell. The table we sit behind serves as a moat And closing the door removes the lumps in our throat. When ...

The Imperial College GP teaching team were well represented at this year’s Society for Academic Primary Care (SAPC) regional conference held on 25th & 26th January in Madingley Hall, Cambridge. Presentations from the team were positively received and included some of the following highlights: Sonia Kumar and Arti Maini presented the educational Communities of Practice (eCoP) model that they developed together with Jo Horsburgh (Lead for Educational Research). This model has been designed to support staff to develop evidence-based, innovative curricula while in turn contributing to the evidence base. The eCOP model offers an approach to management of change in medical education and in other organisational settings seeking to develop as learning organisations. Senita Mountjoy, Ellie Gunning and Laura Storm presented work on the novel “Virtual Toddler” session for teaching child development to medical students. The session employs facilitated e-learning; blended learning, to take...

As part of the Learning and Teaching strategy, Imperial College is currently running a series of ‘Talking Teaching’ seminars which showcase innovative approaches to teaching from around the College.   In May, Dr Elinor Gunning presented her work exploring whether the use of video in the form of vlogs could enhance student reflections.   Reflection is a key skill in medical education and is encouraged throughout the undergraduate curriculum.   Traditionally reflections are recorded in writing, however student engagement is often low and the content quite formulaic.   Advances in technology and social media are giving educators new options which may be more engaging for students and reflect the College’s Learning and Teaching Strategy which encourages both digital learning and innovation.   Elinor discussed her use of vlogs and WhatsApp to capture and share student reflections during the year 3 module ‘The Science of Yoga and Mindfulness’.   The methods w...