Our practice is committed to assist in the training of other health professionals from medical students, nurses to trainee GPs or General Practitioners.

Fully qualified doctors with experience in hospital medicine who wish to become GPs join the practice and spend from 6 to 18 months working here, sharing all aspects of medical care with the primary health care team. The trainee GPs are closely supervised by the regular doctors and bring fresh ideas and enthusiasm to the team. Their training includes seeing patients in surgery, sometimes on their own and sometimes with another doctor present, home visits and learning how to deal with emergencies. Occasionally video-taping a consultation allows the trainee GP to improve their clinical and communication skills. Video-taping is only done with the patients consent and is completely confidential. Should you be asked to take part in a video and you do not wish to then please say so and you will not be videoed. If you agree to be videoed then change your mind afterwards please let the trainee GP know and they can immediately erase the video. Any videos are kept for a maximum period of the trainee’s time here at the surgery, once they leave the surgery the videos are erased. It is a valuable way for the trainee GP to learn and we appreciate and would like to say a public ‘thank you’ to all the patients who do allow themselves to be videoed.

We also help to train medical students from Keele University with a varying degree of experience. Some are first years gaining their first experiences of studying medicine; some are final years and getting ready to take their qualifying exams. If a medical student is working with the doctor or nurse you are seeing you will be asked to give consent to the student being present. Occasionally we may ask if the student could chat to you first briefly before being seen by your usual doctor or nurse. Once again the consultations are strictly confidential. We are grateful to all our patients that assist with the training of the next generation of doctors.

Nurses training to become practice nurses, midwives, district nurses may also be attached to the practice. Usually they accompany the person they are training to be, so a student nurse accompanies our practice nurse or nurse practitioner. You will be asked to give consent to these students being present and again it is strictly confidential. If you do agree we would once again like to thank you for you co-operation.