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Educational Programme

During your 3 year training programme there is a Stuctured Teaching Programme that provides GP orientated formal teaching.  During ST1 and ST2 hospital posts there are fortnightly half-day sessions, during your GP+ posts weekly half-day sessions, and in ST3 a weekly half-day or full-day teaching session which provides 25 days education in your ST3 year.

We aim to provide teaching that meets a wide range of learning styles and builds in a spiral fashion on your earlier learning, clinical experience and ‘real life’ experiences.

The structure for the teaching programme is outlined below.

St Year 1: Laying The Foundation

  • Induction, using the e-portfolio
  • How to prepare for the AKT

Basic Consulting Skills

  • Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
  • Initiating the consultation
  • Information gathering
  • Explanation skills
  • Negotiating a management plan
  • Safety netting

Basics Of Chronic Disease Management

  • Cough and wheeze
  • Asthma
  • COPD
  • Hypertension
  • IHD
  • Hyperlipidaemia
  • Diabetes
  • Heart failure
  • Minor illness
  • A Rough Guide to Dermatology

Introducing The GP Competencies

  • Adult learning and the learning cycle: how to make the best of your training and the e-portfolio (Maintaining performance, learning and teaching)
  • Learning styles (Maintaining performance, learning and teaching)
  • Skills of giving feedback (Maintaining performance, learning and teaching)
  • Professionalism (Fitness to practice)
  • Ethics: ethical principles (Maintaining an ethical approach to practice)
  • Clinical governance and Patient safety (Maintaining performance, learning and teaching)
  • EBM: How to read a paper  (Maintaining performance, learning and teaching)
  • EBM: Gathering evidence session (Maintaining performance, learning and teaching)
  • EBM: Using evidence in clinical practice (Maintaining performance, learning and teaching)
  • The structure of the NHS (Organisation, management and leadership)
  • How primary care and general practice works (Organisation, management and leadership)
  • Understanding funding for primary care:  nGMS, PMS and APMS (Organisation, management and leadership)
  • Team working (Working with colleagues and in teams)
  • Principles of prescribing and prescribing costs (community orientation)

St Year 2: Developing Knowledge And Skills

Consultation Skills Course

  • Consultation models session 1
  • Consultation models session 2
  • Changing patient behaviour
  • Angry and aggressive patients
  • Breaking bad news
  • Telephone consultation skills
  • Triadic consultations
  • Video consultations session 1
  • Video consultations session 2
  • Video consultations session 3

Common Problems

During ST1 as a group you choose the topics to be covered in the ST2 Structured Teaching Programme. Common topics chosen are:

  • AF
  • Upper GI symptoms
  • Lower GI symptoms
  • CKD
  • Prostate problems
  • Erectile dysfunction
  • Headaches
  • Behavioural problems in children
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Dementia
  • Travel advice
  • Osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis
  • Common shoulder problems
  • Back pain
  • Osteoporosis
  • Menstrual problems
  • Menopause and HRT
  • Breast problems
  • Sexual health
  • Domestic violence
  • AKT statistics
  • Sickness certification
  • Death certification and other certification

St Year 3: Becoming a GP

Higher Level Consultation Skills

  • Developing consultation skills:
    • Video consultation analysis
    • Role play scenarios
    • CSA preparation sessions with actors
    • Mock CSA
  • Narrative learning and consulting
  • Neuro-linguistic programming: an aid to consulting

Additional Skills:

  • Palliative care
  • Consulting with Children and Teenagers (including safeguarding)
  • Child Health Promotion Theory Course (if not done during paediatrics post)
  • Dermatology

Psychiatry Module

  • Introduction to CBT
  • Using CBT in practice
  • Mental health act
  • Mental capacity

Management Module (Residential)

  • Working in groups and teams
  • Leadership models, styles and skills – an introduction
  • Chairing skills

Practice Management

  • Leadership skill
  • Project management – management of change
  • Complaints
  • Risk management
  • Recruiting staff and interviewing skills
  • Practice finance and tax
  • Stress and time management
  • Principles of teaching, clinical supervision and mentoring
  • Ethics revisited

Getting a Job

  • CV’s
  • Continuing professional development
  • Future roles in General Practice
  • Finding the right practice:
    • Practice visit exercise: visiting a practice as if you were applying for a job there and reflecting on the experience