Medical School Primary Care Academy

What is The Primary Care Academy Track?

Swansea University Medical School’s Primary Care Academy track aims to provide the highest quality learning experience for students in primary care and community services, preparing our future doctors for the health requirements of patients, families and communities in the coming decades.

Background and Context

More and more healthcare is now being provided outside hospitals, in the community close to or in patients' homes. For our future doctors, this will require additional skills in leadership and team-working, a holistic approach to patients, a better understanding of preventive health and improving wellbeing as well as diagnosing and treating disease.

With an ageing population, the number of patients with complex health conditions is increasing steadily, and doctors will need to develop 'expert generalist' skills that enable them to integrate knowledge of a variety of specialties so that patients are cared for as a 'whole' and not in a fragmented way.

About the Primary Care Academy Track

Supported by our local University Health Boards, the Primary Care Academy is delivered across local communities and supports multi-disciplinary learning and teaching through a community care lens, while allowing medical students to achieve the same learning outcomes as their peers on a secondary care placement track.

Further Information

Student Learning Outcomes from the Primary Care Academy Track:

Demonstrate understanding of specific health issues relating to patients, carers and communities in underserved metropolitan and rural and remote areas, including:
- Chronic and long term conditions
- Late presentation of disease
- Treatment of acute and emergency conditions, including pre-hospital care
- Child and maternal health
- Elderly care
- Palliative and end-of-life care
- Impact of changing community structures (e.g. mining, farming, demographic shifts)

Demonstrate awareness of policies and local and national strategies to address issues of access, equity and improvement of health outcomes for those living and working in underserved metropolitan and rural and remote communities:
- Explain the rationale for existing and changing integrated service provision to support individuals and communities in underserved metropolitan and rural and remote areas
- Make contacts and build national and international networks in primary and community-based care
- Draw from experiences of a range of clinical experiences and settings to identify future career directions

Student Benefits:

Our Primary Care Academy track allows our students to work in partnership with Allied Health Professional students and practitioners to experience high-quality learning in a community setting.

We believe this helps our students improve their understanding of the importance and rewarding nature of General Practice and Primary Care.

They will also gain a real appreciation of the importance of social factors contributing to health and illness, and the importance of working across organisations, to enable our patients to have the best possible access to health and care services, and the best possible health outcomes.

How to Access the Primary Care Academy:

Up to 20 students will be able to undertake the Primary Care Academy method of learning.

Your third, spent in the Primary Care Academy, will replace the traditional model of speciality attachments.

While the learning outcomes remain the same you have the whole year in which to achieve them. This will be possible via negotiated learning opportunities (NLOs) with a mixture of time spent in general practice, community care and secondary care.

Whilst approximately 60 – 70% of your time is expected to be in primary care, you will also have the opportunity to explore hospital or community based activities based on your own identified learning needs and areas of interest. Students will be allocated to general practices in West Wales, as individuals or in pairs, and we will aim for groups of students to be geographically co-located.

Expressions of interest are invited from all year 2 students and preference will be given to those students who are able to demonstrate self-motivation and an ability to undertake self-directed learning.

Curriculum Content:

To successfully complete the Primary Care Academy track and achieve the learning outcomes, students are expected to participate in the following curricular elements:

Adequate attendance
Satisfactory completion of all learning outcomes
Student evaluation
Placement evaluation
Reflective portfolio: an online documentation of learning during the placement