The tutor training session for Year 3 took place on Wednesday 27th August 2025 at 2pm. The session recording and ppt are and available here.

Year 3 GP Tutor Update

video recording tutor update 03092024

In academic year 25-26 students will have 12 Wednesday mornings in a GP practice in either semester 1 or 2. Students will be in groups of 6, and you will have the same students for the 12 sessions. The students will be spending the rest of the week in a hospital in the same Trust area. £355 per session - 12 sessions each semester - £4,260 per term.

 You can find lots of useful information in the Year 3 GP Tutor Student Guide 2025-26

The students will have access to Virtual Primary care. You can find information on how to login to the website in the document below.

VPC information for students You need a QUB email account to access the resources.

Here is the VPC Capsule Speaking Clinically guide with accompanying resources that the students can use

Home Visiting Guidance for practices PDF

Key activities on placement 

• Students should get the chance to speak to patients, but the focus is on their communication skills. These can be pre-arranged "cold cases" such as CDM or complex co-morbidities 
• Ideally students should all get the chance to do at least 1 Home visit (though not mandatory). It could be to a care home. 
• Students can do practical tasks such as ECGs, taking blood, dipping urines, etc 
• Students can phone patients e.g.  to check how someone is post hospital admission (holistic conversation and gathering information), to check ref medication compliance or to notify of a change in meds 
• to give health promotion advice e.g. raised cholesterol 

Structure of the Wednesday morning 

• The students should be met at agreed time (can be 9 or if easier can be 9:15 or 9:30) 
• They should be there til 1pm 
• Ideally 12-1pm should be the group teaching/feedback slot. The 6 get together and at least 1 presents a case. The others can share what they have seen that day 
• Teaching topic can be linked to something clinical they saw or perhaps something around how the Gp team works 

FAQs 

• The 12-1pm teaching slot can be rotated between the GPs  
• You can take students in semester 1 or 2 or ideally both 
• 6 students all at once may sound daunting, but they should work in pairs and ideally rotate around activities (a bit like the year 4 programme before C25 introduced) 
• There is a model timetable with lots of suggested activities, but it can be adapted to suit the practice in terms of who is working on a Wednesday and room availability. I have developed it based on feedback from those who have been taking year 3 
• Students can also do self-directed stuff (for short periods) and it is helpful to share them out across the team (PM, PBP, PN. MDT if available) 
• There is very little in terms of admin, sign off and it can be shared between GPs 
• There is no preparation required by the GP in advance or curriculum to cover formally 
• If you are taking year 5 students in block 3, they finish on 24th Feb and so there would only be 3 Wednesdays when they would overlap. They could help with Year 3 teaching 
• The year 3 students finish 2 weeks earlier than year 4 or 5 students in December 

What worked well from Tutors (all feedback from Spring 2025) 

• Seeing patients and mid/post consultations discussions. 
• Hot desking  
• Face to face consultations with patients 
• Hot seating, treatment room, running BP clinic 
• Speaking to a prearranged patient, doing audit, taking bloods. 
• Visiting a patient in their own home or a Nursing Home 
• Patient face to face consultations, medication counselling with PBP 
• Seeing patients in clinic 
• Consulting with patients and presenting cases/getting feedback 
• Clinical contact with patients  - sitting in with GP during surgeries 
• Overall, for students and tutors alike most useful activities are the times sitting in with GP and getting direct patient contact. This year, we involved the students with a Covid spring booster clinic which they all really enjoyed. 
• Protected student led consultations (hot seating) with direct GP supervision. 
• Taking histories and examining patients, both supervised and unsupervised. 
• Hot seating, blood taking, ECG. 

For more information or enquiries please email the Year 3 GP Academic Lead, Dr Nick Gardner - n.gardner@qub.ac.uk