Clinical and communication skills

You will be in contact with patients on your clinical placements from the first few weeks of the course, so we have designed a curriculum that focuses on the effective clinical and communication skills you will need to become an empathetic and confident practitioner right from the start.

You will follow an integrated approach to learning, which emphasises the relationship between the wide range of skills you use in a consultation, from physical and mental state examination, to history-taking, clinical reasoning and communication.

You will acquire the skills to perform physical examinations by practising on your fellow students. In peer physical examination, students act as models for each other to learn skills in simple procedures. You learn how to examine and, importantly, what this feels like for patients being examined.

This takes place in a professional atmosphere, in small groups of mixed gender under the supervision of your clinical skills tutor, who is an experienced clinician. You will treat your peers with the same professional courtesy as you would patients.

In your communications skills sessions, you will interview simulated patients, many of whom are professional actors.

Simulated patients both portray the characteristics of and respond as real patients to help you to learn and develop your consultation skills.

You will observe students in your group undertake consultations in real-time via a video-link. You will learn how to provide detailed, descriptive and non-judgmental feedback, and by observing each other will be able to hone your own consultation skills.

Within our Year 2 clinical skills curriculum you will attend specific sessions to help you to begin to develop your clinical reasoning skills – thinking about the cause for a particular patient’s symptoms.

In Years 3, 4 and 5 this teaching is consolidated by attending communication masterclasses tutored by GP and hospital clinicians.

In recent times it has become more necessary for many doctors to conduct consultations remotely via video call. We have responded to these developments quickly, adapting our communication skills teaching to ensure students are equipped with the skills and confidence to conduct this type of consultation effectively.

In Year 3, you will acquire more complex procedural skills at our dedicated teaching facilities at our hospital placement sites.

You will learn a broad range of skills and techniques, from suturing and taking bloods, to inserting cannulas and catheters, under the expert guidance of dedicated clinical skills tutors.

You will also have the opportunity to practise and revisit your skills multiple times, ensuring you graduate with the confidence and knowledge to hit the ground running as a member of the NHS workforce.

From Year 3, you will have the opportunity to immerse yourself in simulated scenarios at our hospital teaching facilities with a simulator mannequin. The scenarios simulate a wide range of physiological and neurological symptoms as well as pharmacological responses.

You will have the opportunity both to participate and observe simulated scenarios, providing and learning from group feedback, while putting your clinical, teamwork and communication skills into practice.

Clinical reasoning is central to every clinician’s work. It is a complex skill, describing the thinking and decision-making processes associated with good clinical practice.

You will develop the skills to be able to gather information from a patient such as through history taking, physical examination, diagnostic tests, reasoning and decision making, to be able to identify the most likely causes for the patient’s symptoms.

From Year 2 onwards, you will start to further develop your clinical reasoning skills, and have specific sessions focused on these. This learning is consolidated by workshops throughout Phase II, which help you develop your clinical reasoning skills.