The situation will continue to evolve and may again suddenly change in unexpected ways but the main principle of providing a good placement experience to our student doctors remains to get them involved in any way that we can. Involving student doctors in our daily working routines is always a valuable experience for them, whether that be telephone/online triage, telephone/video consulting, face-to-face appointments, ordering investigations and review of results, prescribing, practice meetings, change planning, significant event analysis or audit.
Please consider the following:
- Pastoral Care – Student doctors may have very different individual circumstances and concerns regarding COVID-19 and being on clinical placement. It may be useful to address this with each individual student doctor at the start of the placement. They will benefit from being clearly aware of who to speak to about any worries.
- PPE provision and practice procedures. Student doctors will have been provided with PPE donning/doffing training by the University but you may wish to revisit this as part of induction. Placements are responsible for providing adequate PPE to student doctors.
- Where students can change and store their clothes/personal belongings as they will now be required to change into University scrubs upon arrival at the placement each day. For GP practices where there are no dedicated changing facilities, lockable rooms such as toilets or internally lockable consulting rooms are acceptable.
- In the outpatient or primary care setting, student doctors should still sit in and observe consultations, including telephone and video consultations.
- If telephone consulting with a patient please ensure telephone consultations are audible to Student Doctors by using speakerphone and ensure consent is given by the patient.
- Student doctors will still benefit enormously from being able to consult independently with patients where this is appropriate. For example in primary care placements, telephone and video consultations are perfectly acceptable for student doctors to do independently with direct or indirect supervision from GP tutors.
- Independent consultations should be presented to the GP tutor or clinical supervisor and can be used by student doctors as Case Presentations and Discussions (CPADs) for their ePortfolio.
- Remote consultations will be new skills for student doctors, and they may benefit from direct supervision initially. They may find it hard to know whether their consultations are of sufficient quality/depth to be used as a CPAD and they will require guidance on this.
- In primary care placements, student doctors should be involved in telephone or online triage where possible – this is likely to remain in General Practice for the time being and student should gain experience with it. This should be directly supervised.
- The School has created two guidance documents to support the use of Remote Consultation during placements:
- Guidance for Supervisors — Remote Consultations (PDF)
- Guidance for Student Doctors — Remote Consultations (PDF)
- Face-to face consultations are still encouraged.
- Student doctors should still examine patients where possible and do still need to record Observed Examinations (OEs) for their ePortfolio.
- For primary care placements, please consider how you will prepare your patients to have these consultations. Normally we would advocate gaining consent at the time of the patient booking the appointment. This will still be possible for routine appointments but may need a new process when students are involved in triage/more urgent care.
- For primary care placements please also see the Home Visit section (link) for further guidance on taking student doctors on visits during COVID-19.
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