Inaugural Annual GP Tutors Conference: Future of Primary Care Education - 4 June 2025

Undergraduate medical placements in primary care have become a core foundation of medical school curricula in most countries worldwide and a body of research of these placements is slowly emerging. So what? What does and can this knowledge do to inform GP educationalists and what are the implications for medical students and indeed the future of undergraduate medical education?

By taking a journey from the emergence of primary care undergraduate medical education through to the current knowledge base, we can start to explore, plan and dream the future of medical education.

Professor Hugh Alberti is professor of general practice education in the School of Medicine at Newcastle University. He is head of GP teaching and leads the team of GP lecturers across the regional medical school. He has developed a 20-strong GP educational research group consisting of research fellows, teaching fellows and academic GP trainees. He supervises several GPs and trainees undertaking doctorate degrees and he is passionate about developing a career pathway for GP educationalists, from the undergraduate to qualified GPs.

His research focuses on all aspect of undergraduate medical teaching including career choice influences, patient involvement, national surveys and studies on role-modelling, sustainable healthcare teaching and remote consulting. He has also been influential in implementing and researching the largest LIC (longitudinal integrated clerkship/placement) in the world. He is a GP partner and trainer at a large inner-city practice in Middlesbrough. In his spare time, he is a family man who aims to fight climate change; he used to be a triathlete.

Many of us tell stories in our medical teaching - but we may not always be aware of it, and we probably don't use them to their full potential. This talk briefly outlines the theory and evidence behind the power of stories as a teaching and learning tool, and offers some practical tips for using stories more effectively in your GP teaching.

Professor Graham Easton is an academic GP, Honorary Professor of Clinical Communication at Queen Mary University of London, and 2024 National Teaching Fellow. For many years he was a Senior Producer (and presenter of Radio 4's medical flagship programme Case Notes) in the BBC Science Unit, where he was trained in the art and science of storytelling for communication. He was acting head of undergraduate GP teaching, and then a Programme Director for GP specialty training at Imperial College, and his doctoral research at the Institute of Education explored how lecturers use stories in medical teaching. He has written or edited several books, including The Appointment - the story of a morning surgery told from inside the mind of a GP - which was selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club.

Clinical placements have so much to offer to the education of medical students. This workshop focuses on a small but important part of that education – the nurturing and encouragement of clinical reasoning skills. Over the course of the workshop, the facilitator will offer some tips and techniques to help tutors help medical students develop their clinical reasoning skills in the busy clinical setting.

Delegates attending this workshop will:

• Discuss opportunities to teach clinical reasoning in their clinical setting.
• Enhance their ability to evaluate students’ individual clinical reasoning learning needs.
• Discover new techniques for facilitating medical student clinical reasoning.

Facilitator

Professor Simon Gay, a UK GP and graduate of St George’s Hospital Medical School, has worked at Keele, Nottingham and Leicester medical schools. He is a GMC Education Associate, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Education for Primary Care, immediate past Chair of ASME’s Educator Development Committee, and a founder member and former treasurer of both the UK Clinical Reasoning in Medical Education group and the International Clinical Skills Foundation, an Australian Registered Charity.

Active in both undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare education, Simon is Professor of Medical Education (Primary Care) and Head of Leicester School of Medicine. Simon’s research interests include clinical reasoning, reflection and the transition to qualified practice.

Simon has contributed to more than 80 clinical reasoning related academic outputs including peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, key-note presentations and workshops; and more than 15 years ago, with an academic colleague, designed and implemented the world’s first dedicated clinical reasoning development programme for medical students.

This workshop will explore ways to incorporate research and QI into your teaching. Stephen will talk about the Primary care Academic CollabraTive (PACT), a UK-wide research network of over 1,000 general practice clinicians and discuss opportunities for how GPs of any background and experience can get involved with research and academia. The workshop will help develop skills to engage and inspire colleagues and students in research and QI within your practice, adding value to both your teaching and clinical roles.   

Facilitators

• Stephen Woolford is a GP Registrar and NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in General Practice at City St George's, University of London. He is currently the Chief Investigator for The Hidden Workload Study, the first national mixed methods analysis of contemporary general practice workload.   

• Agalya Ramanathan is a GP and Clinical Teaching Fellow in the primary care education team at City St George's, involved in developing and evaluating the SSCT in QI at City St George's.  

To speak of flourishing helps to move the wellbeing conversation beyond the idea of resilience and toughing it out alone, towards something more interpersonal and ecological, connecting our inner lives with the ebb and flow of loss and renewal, death and growth. Flourishing is about connection with our values, with purpose and meaning (Aristotle’s eudaimonia), engaging with compassion towards our own humanity and that of others.

This workshop will explore the concept of flourishing and how creative enquiry can support flourishing and connection in health professional education, especially important in these VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) times.

Facilitators

• Dr Jeyapragash Jeyapala is an Internal Medicine Trainee in North West London and the Enhance Generalist Skills Programme Fellow for London, where he facilitates flourishing workshops for healthcare practitioners. He has previously taught at UCL as a Clinical and Professional Practice Tutor, alongside being a Personal Tutor to first-year medical students. Additionally, he has facilitated personal development workshops at the University of Jaffna Medical School, Sri Lanka. Outside of his NHS work, he leads the UCL Student Inclusion Health Society, a group focused on establishing the concept of collective flourishing within Inclusion Health.

• Elle Tallgren is a fourth-year medical student at Barts and the London School of Medicine. She has been interested in the process of creative enquiry in creating flourishing spaces since her first year of medicine. She continues in harnessing this interest by aiding in the organisation and facilitation of workshops, as well as writing her dissertation on the role of creative inquiry in preventing burnout in medical students. Elle has recently also co-presented a keynote on flourishing and creative enquiry with Professor Louise Younie at the University of Sunderland.

The workshop will cover:

• A brief review of the MLA format
• The MLA content map including the primary and secondary care split
• What is good about the MLA
• What are the potential downsides relating to the MLA
• How the MLA may influence you as primary care teachers

Facilitators

• Mr Kevin Hayes FRCOG Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Head of MBBS Assessment. Kevin has the overall responsibility for all assessments in MBBS at City St George's (CSG) and has been the lead for CSG for the Medical Licensing Assessment (MLA) since it's introduction 8 years ago. Nationally, he is an elected member of the Medical Schools Council Item Development Group for the Applied Knowledge Test section of the MLA and has represented CSG internationally, in relation to wider education and assessment in The Caribbean, USA, Republic of Ireland and Cyprus.
• Dr Saima Shah, Senior Lecturer in General Practice and Medical Education Saima is the Responsible Examiner for City St George's MBBS Penultimate-Year written exam, and the Academic Lead for the MBBS5 Year 1 Introduction to Medicine module. She contributes to the Medical Schools Council national Medical Licensing Exam (MLA) Applied Knowledge Test on both the exam construction group and the standard setting panel. Alongside her academic role, Saima is a GP in London, with an interest in dermatology.

What makes a GP placement unforgettable in all the right ways? In this interactive and engaging workshop, Dr Simon Thornton, GP and Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Bristol, will share insights from recent research conducted by the GP teaching team a the University of Bristol, exploring what makes GP placements rock. Participants will reflect on their own teaching environments, share best practices, and leave with practical ideas to enhance the design and delivery of undergraduate GP placements. 

Facilitator

Dr Simon Thornton is a GP partner and educationalist with interests in leadership, continuity of care, quality assurance and providing capacity for teaching in general practice.  

Involving patients actively in teaching can lead to transformative learning experiences however there are many barriers meaning Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) can end up staying on the 'would be nice' pile. Katie Campion (Patient Involvement Lead at City St George’s) will co-lead a workshop with Evi Machova (a person living with long covid and chronic pain) to explore small steps we can take to work in more authentic partnership with patients in teaching medical students. The aim of the workshop is to equip GP tutors with a practical understanding and toolkit for involving patients as active partners in student learning, even within time-constrained clinical environments.

Facilitator

Katie Campion is a senior lecturer and Community Visits and Patient Involvement Lead for MBBS. Patients, carers and community groups are involved in medical teaching, skills sessions, exams, and in committee meetings. Katie provides leadership and expertise into how we can do involvement well to create powerful learning experiences. She has a clinical background as a Neuro Physiotherapist before moving into co-design, co-production and patient involvement. Katie is a strong advocate for working in authentic partnership with patients and communities to liberate ways of working and humanise healthcare.