Creating a Virtual General Practice

for the Hull York Medical School

Dr Jean McKendree

Hull York Medical School

•130 students, half in Hull, half in York

•Technology is used as one way to ensure the students are treated as a single cohort

•Videolinked plenaries to ‘set the scene’

•Blackboard to provide learning resources

•Virtual General Practice to trigger learning

Virtual General Practice

•Each week, the students meet new patients in the Virtual General Practice

• Intended to serve as triggers for Problem-Based Learning

•Also attempts to be somewhat more representative of the general population

•Links to the patients they will see in their clinical placements

Blackboard

Blackboard

•Customised for our curriculum

•Grouped according to activities during the week

•Virtual Patients start each week

Virtual Patient

Virtual Patient

•Brief scenario of presenting problem

•Brief medical records

•Other resources, e.g. test results, pages from the Internet

•Resources may appear at different times in the week

Resources

Teaching and Learning Issues

•Designing a truly integrated curriculum takes a huge amount of up-front work

•Once students have used the VLE, they want more

•Requires a buy-in from staff so that the approach is consistent

•BUT once it is there, much of it runs itself and requires less day-to-day monitoring