What is it about?
All medical students at King's College London are required to write about a consultation with an obese patient during their primary care placement in their final year. These narratives allow the reader insights in the problems students encounter and strategies that they successfully. The researchers have used these narratives to help them design a successful educational program to support these students, and their patients, in talking collaboratively about how to become healthier.
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Why is it important?
Obesity is a risk factor for many common diseases like diabetes, cancer, heart disease and stroke. It is important that patients are supported in becoming healthier before these problems begin, however doctors are often unwilling to raise the issue until the patient becomes sick, through fear of offending or embarrassing the patient, not having enough time or resources, or simply not knowing how to help. This paper shows how student doctors can learn to support their patients more effectively.
Perspectives
Reading these accounts of how students struggle to support their patients really moved me to as an educator to try to support them better. This is the story of that evolving process, where I identified what students needed, then tried various strategies to address their learning needs. I could then read the reflective accounts of the next group of students to see how they used these strategies - so I could see what worked and what didn't. Read it for yourself, and see if you agree.
Kathleen Leedham-Green
King's College London
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Enabling tomorrow’s doctors to address obesity in a GP consultation: an action research project, Education for Primary Care, July 2016, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14739879.2016.1205459.
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