During my first year of medical school, I remember eagerly looking forward to my fortnightly clinical placements during which a small group of medical students would meet at a General Practice (GP) clinic and learn from healthcare professionals in a hands-on setting. Our teaching would revolve around common conditions seen in primary care and clinical skills such as measuring blood pressure and performing abdominal and knee examinations. Placements were a completely different educational setting from the university and offered some variety amid the otherwise monotonous schedule of lectures and small group teachings.
However, the highlight of placements was most arguably interacting with the patients who came to the GP for their check-up, treatment, or simply to get some helpful medical advice. On each of our placement days, we as medical students got the opportunity to either observe consultations between patients and their doctor or interview patients ourselves.
Here are some of the reasons why I found this experience absolutely invaluable:
Observing patient interaction during my first year gave me valuable insight into the reality of being a doctor.
Medical practitioners do not merely collect data from patients and give diagnoses and treatments as an output. Being a doctor comprises so much more than that. Soft skills such as showing empathy and compassion towards patients are crucial in delivering holistic care to the ill. By observing the GPs communicate with their patients, we learn about the essence of patiently listening to their health concerns and the importance of them instilling trust in the medical profession.
Each patient who came into the GP clinic was unique and had a different story to share.
Whilst it was stimulating to note the diverse health concerns that patients could have, it was also inspiring to watch doctors communicate professionally with patients bearing different personalities and beliefs.
We get the golden opportunity to develop our history-taking skills.
By doing so, we are able to extract the information that would be most relevant for our case. What a perfect head start for the imminent clinical years of our undergraduate medical studies!
It develops a sense of confidence in us.
As we keep practicing interviewing patients and ameliorating our history-taking abilities, we are more sure of our ability to efficaciously take patient histories as future doctors. Now, we do have a very long way to go before becoming experts, but as a taster session in history-taking, it was indeed rewarding!
It never feels boring!
The GPs we were observing were all super friendly and always eager to explain any medical jargon that we could not yet decipher as pre-clinical students. Observing the communication between the GPs and patients was also very intellectually stimulating as we learned about new pharmacological terminologies, the side effects of drugs, and even some interesting surgical terms!
The patient interaction element during our pre-clinical years has its own very special place in our curriculum. It not only gives us an early appreciation of learning and working in a clinical environment, but also provides a variation to our study routines which makes medical studies all the more fun and thought-provoking as we observe the real-life applications of all the theoretical scientific content we learn at medical school!
by theaspiringMD.
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