Throughout phase one, you will gain early clinical exposure via community placements. These are designed to enable you to achieve specific learning outcomes identified by the General Medical Council (GMC). The GMC states that clinical placements should reflect the patterns of health care in the UK. Therefore, due to increasing numbers of patients being treated in the community/GP setting, these placements have been included in your early clinical contact.

You will be sent out to community placement locations with your CBL group. You will have a chance to get to understand the demographics of the area and will stay in this same area throughout phase one. The highlight of the visits is the chance to talk with your first real patients and hear their experience of the healthcare provided to them. The patients you see will normally have conditions that will have been touched upon in your block teaching, and that are often chronic and life-changing. It is not unknown for patients to have died before students were due to meet them.

As students, we found these in-depth looks into how a life changes with disease to be hugely useful. Aside from the academic benefits, they help you appreciate how the patient who comes into your GP surgery / A&E department will often have had a complex timeline and homelife that always needs to be considered.

Community-based learning helps with providing context to your learning at university. In a similar way to the Social and Population Perspective theme, it will show you how every patient views health and healthcare in a completely unique way.

Any questions, please feel free to contact Damien Coleburt (d.coleburt@warwick.ac.uk)