Abstract

Designing a clinical skills programme: a partnership between students, patients and faculty

Author(s): Darrell Evans, Aoife Canavan

This paper describes the design and implementation of a clinical skills programme within a new UK medical school and the journey that students take in the development of their clinical skills base. The approach at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) is to integrate clinical skills training horizontally and vertically throughout the course, providing an array of opportunities to develop specific skills and a variety of different methods including the use of purpose built clinical skills facilities and extensive patient contact. The focus of the design template was to ensure students would be able to understand the scientific and clinical basis for learning their skills and where to integrate them into their practice. This template is delivered using a building block approach, where students first develop basic skills, which are repeated and enhanced as the course progresses. The provision of extensive formative opportunities to test their own skills development including mock OSCEs and simulators has, in the eyes of the students, helped lead to high levels of competence being achieved in summative assessments. However, until the first cohort of students enter their postgraduate training and development phase, a definitive assessment of our approach to clinical skills is not possible. The feedback from students, patients and faculty thus far though, plus results from clinical skills assessments, indicate that our students are prepared for the delivery of effective patient care.