Introduction

Template for PfPA and PfPB submissions

Penalties for late submission of PfP coursework


PfP A

Introduction to PfP
PfP A Handbook
Transport guidelines
PfP A Student GP Placements 2012-13
Student Feedback
Student Feedback Tables


PfP B

Group Allocations
PfP B Timetable - January 2013
PfP B Handbook - January 2013
PfP B Review Groups - January 2013
PfP B Timetable - December 2012
PfP B Handbook - December 2012
PfP B Review Groups - December 2012



PfP C

PfP C Handbook
(paper copies will be distributed at the briefing session)
Template for PfPC submissions


PfP D
PfP D Handbook
PfP D Student Pairs
Student Feedback
Student Feedback Tables
Template for PfPD submissions
PfP D Review Groups

Preparing for Patients Programme

Introduction

Preparing for Patients (PfP) is a programme that provides pre-clinical medical students at the University of Cambridge with early patient contact. The first three years of your medical studies in Cambridge concentrate on the science that underlies medicine. Alongside this study, running throughout the three pre-clinical years, you will undertake a programme designed to provide you with opportunities to relate your class work to real patients' experiences of health problems. The programme will also prepare you for clinical study by helping you progressively to develop the communication skills you will need to interact successfully with patients.

There are 4 modules of PfP:

• PfP A involves meeting patients in general practice (year 1)
• PfP B involves meeting patients in a hospital setting (year 2)
• PfP C involves visiting community-based health-related agencies (year 2/3)
• PfP D enables you to follow a pregnant woman and her family at home over some time (year 3)

These four elements provide a complementary set of different experiences that will build on each-other to gradually progress your abilities and understanding of communication and the patient's perspective of illness. The course emphasises many issues relevant to your training as a medical student:

• the importance of communication between doctor and patient
• patients' perception of illness and the personal and social factors relating to this
• the relationship between the patient's perception of illness and their underlying disease
• inter-relationships between the various organisations and agencies that provide support for people with health-related problems.
• the use of reflection in learning clinical medicine

PfP is designed to help pre-clinical medical students take the first steps in developing the skills and competencies that form the basis for effective communication in medical interviews. Those who remain in Cambridge for the clinical years will receive the full clinical and communications skills course which further combines competencies in communication skills, history-taking and clinical examination in an integrated approach to illness and disease. Please see the PfPA Introductory Leaflet for further details of the course.

PfP is one of the 2nd MB subjects, and you will therefore be required to pass all four strands, A, B, C and D, to be qualified to proceed to clinical school.

Special arrangements have been made for affiliated, transfer and other students following the medical course "not for honors" to complete PfP. As these students will be doing only the first two years of the preclinical course (Parts IA and IB), they will need to do PfPC and D a little earlier than their contemporaries. Standard undergraduates will do PfPA in their first year, PfPB in their second year, PfPC in the Long Vacation between their second and third year, and PfPD in their third year. Students doing the course in two years will do PfPA in their first year, PfPC in the Long Vacation between their first and second year, and PfPB and D in their second year.

In addition to following the standard undergraduate course, Cambridge Graduate Course Students (CGC) undertake a number of clinical attachments, on which they must submit written assignments in the first two years of the course. The Faculty Board of Clinical Medicine have approved this patient contact element of the CGC as equivalent to PfP, and CGC students are therefore exempt from the formal requirement to take PfP for the 2nd MB.

You are required to submit course work for each of the four strands. You will find details of what is required in the course handbook. All submissions must be made using the template provided.

You should use your University Student Number (USN), and not your name, on the work you submit for the 2nd MB, as it will be assessed anonymously. USNs are available from CamSIS via the ‘Student Self Service’ page. When the page opens your USN will be displayed at the top of the page after your name.

PfP A

The Preparing for Patients A course runs from October to February, and gives first year medical students early clinical contact in their first two terms at Cambridge.

Aims of PfPA

• to support students to interact respectfully and ethically with patients.
• to allow students to take their first step to conduct a medical interview.
• to show the linkage between core science learning and clinical practice, including patients' health problems and experiences.
• to provide a practical illustration of themes established within the Social Context of Health and Illness course.

Objectives of PfPA

By the end of the PfPA programme, you should be able to:

• conduct a simple medical interview, discussing with patients their health problems, their experience of them and their expectations of health care
• demonstrate understanding of the principles of consent and confidentiality and the practicalities of respecting consent and preserving confidentiality
• identify what influenced the success of those interviews from the perspective of the patient and themselves
• look across their experiences with different patients in General Practice to identify a challenge during an interview and potential solutions
• make links between themes in the Social Context of Health and Illness course and real life experience.

In the first year, all students on the PfPA programme visit a GP tutor in their surgery for two afternoons. On each occasion, students spend time first with the GP tutor and then interview patients in pairs, on one occasion in the surgery and once in the patient's home. Students conduct a simple medical interview, discussing with patients their health problems, their experience of them and their expectations of health care. Students meet their GP tutor immediately afterwards to discuss their experiences and where possible to make links to their core science learning.

GP practice visits are preceded by a briefing organised by the Course Organiser and followed by a final review session at the University. This review session will be led by two GPs and a patient who has a serious illness. The aim is to use communication skills and your scientific knowledge to help you understand that patient's illness.

Timetable

Briefing sessions, in small groups, will take place at the start of the Michaelmas term and will be followed by the visits themselves. The review sessions will take place in the Lent term, and you will be expected to submit your coursework at the review session. You should consult your own personalised time-table on the Faculty Board website to find out when your PfP sessions are. You will be given copies of the Course Handbook and information about how to find your GP's surgery at the briefing session, but copies are also available on this page.

PfP B

Aims of PfPB

• to enable students to further explore patients' experience and understanding of illness
• to continue and extend students' introductions to the medical interview
• to link students' core science learning to patients' experiences of illness

Objectives of PfPB

By the end of the PfPB programme you should be able to:

• conduct a more complex medical interview than in PfPA, discussing with patients the reasons for their admission to hospital, the symptoms that they have suffered, their experience of their health problems and their expectations of health care
• understand the feelings and experiences of being a patient in hospital and identify good practice that helps to improve patients' experiences
• identify what influenced the success of your interview from the point of view of the patient and, from your own perspective, in gathering information about disease and illness.
• explain a characteristic of a patient's illness in terms of your knowledge of core science relevant to medicine

In your second year, you will take part in a programme of visits to patients in hospital. These experiences will enable you to look at clinical problems relevant to the core science teaching, and again allow you to explore patients' experience of these problems and their expectations of health care, but now in the secondary care setting. As in PfPA, you will attend briefing and review sessions prior to your visits. You will be instructed in an interviewing format with increased complexity compared to that used in PfPA.

Each student will undertake two visits. Twenty students at any one hospital site in the region will be divided into two groups of 10 to meet a tutor from the hospital and be briefed about their task. You will be sent to see patients in pairs. As far as possible patients will be chosen with problems that reflect systems and material being studied in the core medical science course. After the experience, you will meet to debrief in your group with a tutor to look at not only the scientific basis of the patients' medical problems, but also how such diseases affect patients' lives. You will be expected to submit a piece of written coursework on PfPB which is a compulsory assessment for Second MB.

Visits will be arranged in three sessions, each over a number of days, immediately before the start of the Michaelmas term, and before and after the Lent term. Each student will be allocated to one of these three sessions, and will attend a briefing session before the hospital visits, and a review session after the visits.

In outline, the timetable for each session is as follows. Detailed timetables will be posted in time for each session.

Group 1: Monday, 26 September - Friday, 30 September 2011

Group 2: Thursday, 1 December - Wednesday, 7 December 2011

Group 3: Wednesday, 11 January - Tuesday, 17 January 2012

The briefings, visits and review sessions for PfPB will be all take place in the week assigned for that part of the course. Students will be expected to hand in their course work within a specified time after the review session.

PfPC

Health care is often mistakenly taken to mean care provided in general practice or hospital. However many more agencies, groups, organisations and networks are involved in supporting people with health problems in the community. PfPC has been developed to enable you to experience medicine in a wider context within society by exploring such organisations. During the summer vacation between your second and third years, you will be asked to select and visit a voluntary organisation (such as CRUSE), a complementary medical therapist (such as an acupuncturist) or statutory agency (such as Social Services). You will be asked to explore the service provided from the perspective of a client trying to access the service

Aims of PfPC

To provide students with the opportunity to experience health care in a wider context within society by exploring, from a user's perspective, agencies, groups, organisations and networks that are involved in supporting people with health problems in the community.

Objectives of PfPC

By the end of the programme you will be able to

• describe the services provided to support people with health problems by the agency, group, organisation or network visited in the community
• assess the strengths and weaknesses of such services and how they interface with the work of primary and secondary health care teams
• define the evidence that would help a medical practitioner evaluate the value of the service to users
• understand the ease or difficulty that clients have in accessing these services
• reflect upon how visiting this agency, group, organisation or network has affected your understanding of the provision of health care in Society.

The briefing for this module will be held on Thursday, 8 March 2012, 3.00-5.00 pm in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre, with the actual experience taking place in the long vacation. You will visit an agency of your choice, probably near your home. This experience will be debriefed in College supervisions in the first term of the third year by your College Director of Clinical Studies. You will be expected to submit a piece of written coursework on PfPC which is a compulsory assessment for Second MB.

PfP D

The fourth experience for students, to be undertaken in the third pre-clinical year, will be a longitudinal continuity of care module where you will follow a patient in the community over time in their own homes. This will be through the study of the effect of pregnancy and childbirth on a mother-to-be and her family. The experience will provide an opportunity to consider the life-change effects on one individual and their family over the course of a year, and give you a further insight into people's experience of healthcare.

After an initial session, you will arrange four visits to the pregnant woman, in pairs, in your own time. At the end of the programme there will be centrally organised review sessions. However, you will also be actively supported throughout this experience by both the Course Organiser and College Directors of Clinical Studies. You will be expected to submit a piece of written coursework on PfPD which is a compulsory assessment for Second MB.

The initial briefing session for all third year medics will be just before the start of the Michaelmas term on Wednesday, 5 October 2011 from 4.00-5.30 pm in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre. Review sessions will be held in the week after the end of the Lent term, and you should make sure that you will be available to attend. It is important that all students attend both the briefing and a review session.

Aims of PfPD

• To continue and extend students' introduction to conducting the medical interview
• To enable students to appreciate the importance of developing an ongoing patient-doctor relationship
• To enable students to make the linkage between the human reproduction course and patients' experiences

Objectives of PfPD

By the end of the PfPD programme, students will:

• have built a relationship with a patient over a period of time, developing a deeper understanding than can be achieved in just one meeting
• conducted a series of extended medical interviews, discussing with one woman her pregnancy, her experience of it, and her expectations of maternity care
• explored the different roles of professionals involved with pregnancy
• considered how the family as a whole is affected by a pregnancy
• made links between core science learning and women's experiences of pregnancy