Community engagement
Welcome to CommUnity!
CommUnity is a partnership between educators at Warwick Medical School and our local community of patients and carers. Here at WMS we strongly believe that the local community are the key stakeholders in all of our courses. By involving community members in our student selection processes, teaching, assessment and curriculum development we hope to produce and influence healthcare professionals and researchers that are better focussed on the needs and values of our local community.
Our group is self-named “CommUnity” with a deliberate emphasis on “Unity” as the patients and carers really wanted to emphasise the unity and partnership between themselves and the WMS staff. The group also aims to have a reciprocal relationship as well: members can call on staff and students if they need help with local community projects, as well as us calling on them for help with our courses. We are especially keen to make links with local community organisations.
Whether you attend hospital appointments regularly, or only visit the GP once in a blue moon, everyone has lived experience of healthcare and your views are important to us.
Recent projects
Recent partnership projects include:
- Patient of the week – Members with lived experience of different medical conditions telling their stories to students, and answering their questions to help students understand what it’s really like to live with a chronic medical condition.
- Transitioning to Clinical Practice – Members took part in different activities on a simulated hospital ward to help prepare second year students to transition from university-based teaching to clinical placements.
- Welcome Week – CommUnity members co-created a film for students during their first week at medical school: "what the public hopes for in a medical consultation". Students also had the opportunity to meet members, hear their stories and create empathy maps.
- Patient safety workshops – CommUnity members and students co-created a workshop for second years on patient safety, and facilitated a workshop for final years.
- Virtual reality – CommUnity members are co-creating VR pieces based on their actual stories.
- Selection Centre for medical school – CommUnity members run and mark one of the stations themselves.
- Student selected module “Lights, Camera, Action!” – CommUnity members helped students develop VR material focusing on a patient’s hospital discharge
- Clinical skills – Members helped medical students learn how to take a history in their first ever clinical skills session by letting them practise taking a history about something that had actually happened to them in the past.
Get involved
If you are interested in helping to educate our students and are willing to share your experience of healthcare, we would love you to join our group!
To sign up, all you need to do is complete the form here. You will then automatically receive our regular newsletter, which gives all the details of upcoming projects and how to get involved. We also hold regular social events such as lunches and coffee mornings so that you can meet other people within the group. There is no minimum commitment so if you are interested, please do join our group to find out more!
Any queries please do contact the group on WMSCommunity@warwick.ac.uk