Teaching & Training
This Practice has a long involvement with teaching and training. Most long term patients will have encountered Medical Students on multiple occasions.
Their willingness to play a vital role in the training of our future doctors has been very gratefully noted. The best way to learn about Medicine is from real people, as opposed to text books, lectures and so forth. Under the guidance of an experienced doctor this can be very effective.
What do our Medical Students Do?
Medical Students also “value add” to the consultation by taking on some routine, but nonetheless important, tasks such as blood pressure measurement, temperature taking, finger prick testing for blood sugar and INR, recording heights and weights, distracting bored children, etc.
Whilst doing these things they also observe the art of the consultation. It is always the right of the patient to ask that a student not be present during their consultation. We respect this absolutely, hence all patients should actively consent to the presence of a student before the consultation begins. If necessary we can always discreetly ask them to leave during a consultation if that is the patient’s wish.
Medical Students are bound by the same ethical constraints as doctors, that is, not to divulge to anyone not involved in the patient’s care information about an individual patient. All Students are reminded of that during their orientation to the Practice.
The involvement of many of our patients in Student Training is one of the chief reasons why we receive consistently positive feedback from students about their placements in Woolgoolga.
We also arrange for them to undertake community visits with other health workers such as Community Nurses, Podiatrists, Physiotherapists and Pharmacists. They often also accompany Dr Kramer when he undertakes school-based case conferencing locally, and Dr McLachlan when she visits Woolgoolga Aged Care Facility.