Aims and Objectives

• Community is a great place to learn medicine because this is where the vast majority of ill health is dealt with, plus in fifth year you will have the chance to see patients before they have had a diagnosis from a doctor, so this is a real opportunity to put your knowledge and skills into practice, in a safe, supervised environment.

Year 5 Community Placements

• 80% of community placements are in General Practice where you will have the chance to see patients before they have had a diagnosis from a doctor, so this is a real opportunity to put your knowledge and skills into practice, in a safe, supervised environment.

  You will:

• Apply your knowledge and use your clinical and communication skills in the consultation
• Learn to balance risk and manage uncertainty, particularly around the early presentation of disease
• Understand how the patient’s background affects how they present and deal with ill health, through seeing patients in their homes and making family connections.
• Follow through the patient’s journey over a period of weeks or months (if you choose a second community placement)
• Improve your ability to work within the team, to draw on the skills and experience of those around you, whilst at the same time making your own contribution. Understand how your own attitudes and assumptions affect your approach to patients.
• Learn about the interface between primary and secondary care and the mechanisms and safety nets that are in place to ensure continued care before, after and, sometimes, instead of hospital admission
• Work with paper light or paperless record systems

Things to do during a Community Placement

• The highlight of a year five GP placement is the opportunity to run your own surgery under parallel supervision. Before your exams, you may like to think of many of your consultations as practice OSCEs. Once the exams are passed then think of them as practice for real life – which is of course what they are. We ask practices to allow students to run at least three surgeries of four patients per week under supervision. You will also get the opportunity to work alongside other members of the team; to practice your skills in chronic disease management and giving advice; to review results and carry our medication reviews (again under supervision).

If you have private study time after all of that is pro-active in order for you to get the most out of the placement. The document below suggests some learning activities you might like to undertake when you are not in surgery.