Community Placements

Medical students learn best from patients. Students are given the opportunity to work with people in the community at an early stage of the course. Much of the regular, week by week practical work takes place in the community and not only in general practice, enhancing the student’s experience and widening their understanding of the patient, their family and the community in which they live and work.

Specific community opportunities are provided from the outset; in programmes open to people accessing health and social care, such as Sure Start or a drug clinic in the first year; and over the second year in the same GP practice on six separate days.

By the 3rd and 4th years the student is ready to see patients in the carefully supervised setting of a general practice for a week, three times in each year, getting to know the practice team and the patients.

In the 5th year students practise everything they have learned; spending a 6 week block in a practice becoming a part of the clinical team and demonstrating their readiness for medical practice.