Teaching and Learning at the Academic Unit of Primary Medical Care

Teaching opportunities

Our teaching team currently supports 111 practices and over 160 GP tutors to provide almost 1000 placements in the community each year. However, there are still opportunities to be involved with our teaching as we are now actively recruiting additional practices as part of the school’s expansion from 256 to 307 students over the next 2 years.

More information is provided below to explain our approach to teaching or check our website here. We also hold regular CPD sessions for our tutors on how to teach general practice.

Please e-mail teachingoffice1@sheffield.ac.uk if you are interested.

Our approach

We teach person-centred and evidence-based primary medical care to our medical students. Our approach to teaching and learning aligns with the Medical School’s position as a socially accountable organization. That means we emphasise the importance of delivering appropriate care for patients and communities with high levels of multimorbidity, particularly where there is greater difficulty accessing care.

Our roles as experts in generalism means we are able to provide broad support for students to develop the GMC outcomes for medical graduates. We are determined that Sheffield graduates understand concepts of health and health-care beyond the biomedical paradigm, and the importance of patient narrative as much as pathophysiology. To support this, we promote learning in the full range of clinical reasoning skills.

• Listening to patients’ stories about their health issues 
• Understanding the clinical impact of social and economic determinants of health
• Person-centred diagnosis and problem solving
• Creating management decisions appropriate for each individual
• Prescribing safely, with consideration to polypharmacy
• Developing clinical practice for complex patients / communities

Recent Highlights in AUPMC teaching and learning include

1. Community Longitudinal Integrated Placement (CLIP)

In January 2021 we aim to launch our new longitudinal community placement which will give selected students a twelve month experience with a single practice linked to a local hospital. These placements will develop continuity with tutors, placements and patients and allow students to become active participants in care through greater opportunities for service learning. Sheffield medical school is at the forefront of the UK Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship Movement hosting the first UKLIC ‘think tank’ in 2018.

2. Deep End Clinical Placement (Health Inequities)

In 2020 we have rolled out more options for students to select additional clinical placements in General Practices serving the most deprived communities in our region. These placements allow students to make the link between social and economic determinants of health and clinical practice and to build bridges between their practices and community and social prescribing organisations. Students get additional teaching on clinical practice related to these communities including adverse childhood experiences, homelessness, refugees and asylum seekers.

3. Planned Educational Activities - Developing Generalist Clinical reasoning

GP facilitated Planned Educational Activities (PEAS) during student first integrated hospital placements in year three provide the opportunity to start to develop clinical reasoning skills (based on real cases) and make connections in the patients journey between the community and hospital. After year 3 and 4 placements in General Practice settings that allow students to make decisions about diagnosis and management under supervision, further GP facilitated PEAS sessions in year 4 and 5 longitudinal hospital placements will take students’ learning in clinical reasoning further, introducing metacognitive skills related to their own pattern recognition, analytical reasoning and cognitive biases.

Additional AUPMC support for the primary care workforce of the future

1. Physician Associate Studies

The AUPMC leads on the delivery of the UoS Masters in Physician Associate Studies.  The academic team looked to understand the needs of stakeholders in the community setting in order to shape our delivery of a national curriculum. This was in order to produce graduates that are as prepared as possible to work across both primary and secondary care.  This resulted in a doubling of the length of placements in general practice, increased time in emergency departments and a module to develop professional understanding of the new role as a generalist in the NHS.

2. General Practice Widening Participation Careers Programme 

Students from areas of high need are more likely than those from more affluent backgrounds to remain and work in the hard to recruit areas. AUPMC works in partnership with the Royal College of General Practitioners to offer school students from a widening participation background work experience in General Practices across the region, with wrap around workshops at the University before and after.