Imperial College London Primary Care

The Department of Primary Care and Public Health at Imperial College London hosted visit today from a senior delegation from the Ministry of Health in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The aim of the visit was to brief the delegation about primary health care in the UK, including the education of medical students and the training of primary care physicians (general practitioners). We had a stimulating discussion about whether some aspects of primary care in the UK could be used in Kazakhstan. Among the speakers from the department wee Professor Azeem Majeed, Dr Sonia Kumar, Dr Sami Hasan, Dr Graham Easton and Professor Salman Rawaf. The delegation from Kazakhstan was accompanied by Professor Rory Shaw, the Medical Director of UK Trade and Investment.

Congratulations to all the winners of our 2014 Undergraduate Medical Student and GP Teacher prizes. STUDENT PRIZES Year 1 Essay Prize: David Kockerling Year 5 North West Thames Provost Prize Patient Project Prize: Joseph Barker Year 6 Adam Snape Audit Prize: Harriet Davidson and Frances Dixon Year 6 Grant Blair Portfolio Prize: T hulasi Naveenam and Sarah Morton GP TEACHER PRIZES Year 1: Dr Tanya Carthy Year 3: Dr Paul Reynolds Year 5: Dr Elizabeth Pearson and Dr Beena Gohil Year 6: Dr Reshma Rasheed and Dr David Lukey Best New Teacher: Dr Siobhan Steel COMMENTS ON STUDENTS Year 5 North West Thames Provost Prize "An incredibly thorough researched review of a patientwith complex medical problems by Joseph Barker. He identified practical, achievable areas of improvement to patient care that could be actioned, as well as a mature patient centred approach in his application of guidelines and consideration of both the patient and carer's needs. Upo...

The Undergraduate GP Teaching Unit in the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College London has been discussing the issue of patient consent in consultations where medical students are present. This has come about as a recommendation from the CQC to have written consent for an observer to be present in the consultation. All Imperial College GP teachers are sent our approved consent documents at the start of a GP student placement. This includes a poster for the waiting room, a patient information leaflet and a patient consent form. We have liaised with other medical schools in thinking about how to approach the issue of consent. The majority view is that written consent on every patient would be unnecessary and cumbersome in terms of paperwork. We do though have consent forms if you wish to use these for now and if the CQC does insist that they become a mandatory requirement when medical students are present during a consultation. The minimum requirements t...

The Dr Foster Unit (DFU) in the Department of Primary Care & Public Health has received funding for two exciting new projects. The first is a one-year NIHR funded project for £100,000 which will quantify the risk of non-obstetric surgery during pregnancy, allowing mothers, surgeons and anaesthetists to make better informed decisions and provide answers to questions regarding the risks involved. The second grant is also from the NIHR. This two-year grant of nearly £650,000 aims to improve the understanding of the Unit’s national hospital mortality surveillance system. It involves evaluating the impact of the alerts in reducing avoidable mortality within English NHS hospitals. Dr Rajvinder has joined the Centre for Patient Safety stream of the Unit. Her work involves developing and piloting patient safety indicators in primary care.

Dr Elizabeth Pearson from the the Fulham Medical Centre gives her perspectives on teaching medical students  I have been a partner for 10 years in a small practice with 7,000 patients in Fulham. I started undergraduate teaching almost as soon as I qualified as I felt that students get such a short time in general practice and wanted to be part of making it a positive experience. What inspired you to start teaching? We all remember a good teacher and when I was training at the Royal Free I had a fantastic placement with a GP in Yorkshire. Even though it was only for 3 weeks it made me change my career choice from surgeon to GP! While working in the hospitals I got fed up with doctors speaking down to GPs and complaining about them referring everything etc. Some of my friends went into General Practice as they couldn't be bothered to stick at hospital work which really irritated me as I never saw it is as a negative fall-back option but a positive career choice which can be re...

Dr Sonia Kumar, Director of Undergraduate Primary Care Education at Imperial College London, has secured a grant from Health Education North West London (HENWL) to fund an innovative one year pilot teaching project. The Community Provider Network (CPN) project involves pairing thirty medical students with thirty nursing students, in primary care, to oversee the management of a group of patients with chronic conditions at high risk of emergency hospital admission. The aims are to use health coaching by nursing and medical students to improve health outcomes in these patients, optimise their management in primary care settings, and reduce the burden on acute services. We will recruit 20 to 30 practices for this CPN pilot and practices would host a pair of students for up to 6 months. Students will be assigned 4 to 6 patients with chronic problems at high risk of complications and of using acute services. Students will visit each patient about once a week and GPs would guide studen...

Imperial College London now has an Undergraduate General Practice Society. With the existence of multiple other medical specialty societies, as well as an active, high-achieving Primary Care Department, the need for a General Practice society was clear to medical students, to ensure more Imperial College medical students consider General Practice as a career. Operating under the name ICGPS (or ‘GPsoc’ as they like to be called), the society is a group of enthusiastic medical students. Working with the Department of Primary Care, ICGPS aims to host events as well as inform members of relevant external events. The society held its first event on 26 March 2014. Further information about the society can be found on its Facebook Page . If you have any suggestions for events, or would like ICGPS to advertise relevant events, please contact: gp.careers@ic.ac.uk . The ICGPS Committee comprises Josephine Emmanuel, Shanil Shivji, Alexis Nelson, Mouni Islam, Tobi Obisanya.