Hospital Clinicians and General Practitioners Working Together to Teach Medical Students

Summary

The aim of the study was to investigate medical student’s perceptions of the effectiveness of clinical skills teaching and discover their opinions on doctor’s teaching styles. The teaching sessions were facilitated by hospital clinicians and general practitioners working together in a clinical skills laboratory. Areas covered were: phlebotomy, ophthalmoscopy, blood pressure measurement and scrubbing-up. Data were obtained from a questionnaire completed by the students by the end of the teaching session. In all, 25 students were surveyed and each student only received one such session in the skills laboratory.

The results showed that students registered a significant increase (p<0.005) in the level of their perceived skill in the areas taught and that the teaching skills demonstrated by the teachers were seen as universally good.

These findings concur with the well recognised value of siting practical clinical teaching in a skills laboratory. This held true when the teaching staff were a mixture of hospital clinicians and general practitioners, where both types of teachers were felt to be equally good. Although this is a small-scale pilot study, its findings further encourage greater integration of hospital and community doctors in undergraduate education.