Years 1 and 2

These pages are for GP teachers. If you are interested in studying medicine at Bristol, please see details of our MB ChB Medicine course.

Teaching in Year 1 and Year 2 are on both on a Thursday, but they are never on the same dates. This is so that GP tutors can teach both year groups if they wish to do a regular teaching session across the year. To help make this easier for you, we have designed an Early Years Teaching Package. All dates for the current academic year can be found in our CAPC Teaching Brochure 2024-25 (PDF, 2,783kB)

Primary Care placements form part of a course called Effective Consulting which explores clinical reasoning, clinical communication and clinical skills. Effective Consulting is integrated into student’s case-based learning cycles (these are fortnightly cycles covering Health and Wellbeing in Year 1, and systems and symptoms in Year 2).

In Years 1 and 2 students go to BNSSG and central Bath practices. A session is three hours long. Students should meet patients in surgery and at home, observe consultations, and practice gathering clinical information through history, examination and understanding investigations, relevant to the case and consulting skill they are studying. Students alternate their visits to primary care with visits to the hospital environment. You need to give feedback during the session and individually at the end of the last session. You can have a group of four or six students.

More about Year 1

In Year 1, students have a total of seven or eight sessions in a practice. In October/November, students attend fortnightly on four occasions as part of an introductory course called Foundations of Medicine which introduces them to the healthcare environment and talking with patients and clinicians. The students then come out to practices three or four more times across the year and will focus on a different case and consultation skill each time.

More about Year 2

In Year 2 there are a total of five or six 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, 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.

Useful links for Year 1 GP teachers

Foundations of Medicine, October - December 2024-2025

‌‌GP1 Teacher guide 2024-25 (PDF, 751kB)

GP1 FOM Session plan 1: Patients and health 2024-25 (PDF, 280kB)

GP1 FOM Session plan 2: Doctor-patient relationship 2024-25 (PDF, 245kB)

GP1 FOM Session plan 3: Professionals and health: caring for carers 2024-25 (PDF, 273kB)

‌‌Additional and alternative ideas for Year 1 teaching (PDF, 135kB)

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Human Health and Wellbeing, January - May 2024-25

‌GP Teacher guide to practical skills teaching (PDF, 145kB)

GP1 HHWB Session Plan 1: Musculoskeletal. 16/1/25 (PDF, 658kB)

GP1 HHW Session Plan 2: Cardiovascular 30/1/25 (PDF, 2,038kB)

GP1 HHW Session Plan 3: Respiratory 13/2/25 (PDF, 2,079kB)

GP1 HHW Session Plan 4: Neurological 13/3/25 (PDF, 611kB)

GP1 HHW Session Plan 5: Gastroenterology 27/3/25 (PDF, 849kB)

GP1 HHW Session Plan 6: Urinary 1/5/25 (PDF, 580kB)

Student concern

Find more information on Student Wellbeing.

Useful documents and links for Years 1 and 2 GP teachers

Useful links for Year 2 GP teachers ‌

Effective Consulting Tutor

If you are interested in becoming an Effective Consulting tutor, please see our guide:‌

Effective Consulting 2024-25 recruitment information (PDF, 1,125kB)
Effective Consulting Tutor Payment FAQ's 2024-25 (PDF, 173kB)

Contacts

Year 1

Academic: Dr Lucy Jenkins

Administrator: Alison Capey

Year 2

Academic: Dr Jessica Buchan

Administrator: Alison Capey

The GPs were excellent and observing their interactions with patients and the subsequent discussion was perhaps the most interesting part. We got a feel for how busy patient lists and challenging patient presentations were managed. The GPs were down-to-earth and keen to involve us, making time to explain and listen to us as well as their patients, despite the time pressures they faced. They were animated and both clearly enjoyed their jobs.

1st Year Bristol Medical Student

Diagnosis:Loneliness Image credit: Weiken Tan, Year 1 Medical Student

For more images of medical student artwork, visit Out of Our Heads