Students only go to Bristol practices in year 1. They have 6 or 7 sessions in practice on a Thursday. They have 3 placements in their Foundations of Medicine block to introduce them to the healthcare environment and talking with patients. The second part of the year, known as Human health & wellbeing, sees the start of the Case Based Learning (CBL) cycle where the students spend two weeks discussing a particular case. The students will come out to practice on 3 or 4 of their CBL cycles where they will meet patients and practice basic clinical skills linked to the particular case they are studying. For each case-based fortnight students will alternate their visits to primary care with secondary care visits. 

In year 2 there are a total of 6 sessions in a practice. In the Autumn students cover: Skin, Body Defence, Pharmacology & Therapeutics, and Anaemia, Blood & Clotting. In GP, students should learn about the clinical themes being taught from the patients they meet in practice. After Christmas, the cases cover specific symptoms;  chest pain, breathlessness, abdominal symptoms, low mood, joint pain, urinary thirst and weight loss, headache and collapse. For this symptom-based teaching, GP tutors should invite two patients with conditions relevant to the symptom the students are covering and help students practice gathering clinical information through history, examination and investigation.

In year 3, students have 16 days in general practice on Tuesdays. This placement consists of two blocks, each of eight whole days in a practice. Each day in practice is themed, linking closely with student’s learning in secondary care. At the end of each placement, students will take part in a ’simulated surgery’ at the local academy, facilitated by the GP. Each day in practice is split into a workshop in the morning with 6 students, facilitated by the GP teacher. In the afternoon, two students take part in a teaching surgery and the other four students undertake their People, Populations and Practices (3P) project.

In Year 4, students come out to practice every Wednesday during their 18 week CMoP clerkship, usually in groups of four. The emphasis is on becoming embedded in your team, experiential learning, carrying out authentic tasks and longer term follow up of patients. The aim is to help them learn to manage the uncertainty and complexity inherent in medical work.

As part of their ‘Preparing for Professional Practice’ course in Year 5, students spend 9 weeks in General Practice. They go to GP surgeries in pairs and observe each other in shared surgeries. We recognise the diversity of ‘what comes through the door’ in general practice and ask you to focus on developing the students by asking them to provide care to your patients, both in and out of the consulting room.

There are opportunities for students to do Student Choice projects in Primary Care and audit projects in general practices are popular. You would be supervising a student doing a project of your or their choice, including marking the completed project. For more information, see our Student Choice pages.