Topping and tailing the students' learning experience

Background: Topping and tailing the students’ learning experience. Summary of work: Teaching weeks begin with a case presentation providing clinical context for subsequent teaching sessions; anatomy, physiology, pathology, diagnosis & treatment, integrated clinical method and medicine, health and society. The final session of the week consolidates learning and answer any residual student questions. Learning Weeks are 'topped and tailed' by direct contact with patients/carers and the doctors involved in their treatment. Summary of results: Evaluation of the case forum has revealed that the presence of patients/carers at the end of the week is associated with positive feedback from both patients and teachers. Where it has not been possible to bring in patients/carers then the week, as a whole, is generally less well perceived. Conclusions: Thus the invitation of patients to the final teaching episode of the week has become best practice in the curriculum. The forums are blueprinted to our exams and it will be possible to assess whether students ability to recall information relating to cases are improved by the presence of a real patient versus a ‘paper case’. Take-home messages: The dissemination of positive student feedback to faculty has been a driving force in improving teaching sessions.