Patient experiences of involvement in remote primary care CONSULTations for Medical Education: A mixed methods study

"What is the problem? During the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of medical consultations between patients and their General Practitioners (GPs) became “remote”, i.e., the doctor and patient were not in the same room during the appointment. This way of consulting remains common in primary care, and today’s medical students will be tomorrow’s GPs. This means medical students must learn how to consult with patients remotely (e.g. over the phone). We need to understand more about what patients (or their carers) think about medical students being involved in their care in this way to ensure they have a good experience of student-led consultations.

What are our aims? This study aims to understand patients’ and carers’ views about being invited to speak to a medical student over the phone. Specifically, we are interested in 1) how acceptable they find this and 2) their understanding of their role in medical education and experiences of speaking to a medical student.

How will we achieve our aims? This study will use a combination of methods over two phases.

Phase 1: Patients and carers 18 years or over will be invited to complete a short survey after speaking to a medical student or GP over the phone. The survey will ask for some demographic information (e.g., age, ethnicity, etc) and questions about acceptability. At the end of the survey, they will be asked if they are happy to be entered into a £50 prize draw and to be contacted to take part in a follow-up interview.

Phase 2: Survey participants willing to be interviewed will be contacted to arrange an interview (face to face or over the phone). An interpreter will be available to support interviews where participants do not speak English, to ensure a diverse range of experiences are captured. Interviews will take up to one hour and a £10 voucher will be offered to all interview participants.

The researcher will analyse the survey and interview data to identify patterns (e.g. similarities and differences) in patient and carer perspectives to understand key issues (e.g. acceptability) in more depth.

Patient and public involvement Two patient and carer representatives are co-applicants on this grant, and will join the research team. They will offer advice and critique on the design and methodologies, input and give feedback on study recruitment, study documents, interpretation and sharing of the results.

What difference will this study make? The findings of this study could inform user-led guidelines for how to involve patients and their carers in student-led remote consultations to support a good experience. This study will support the involvement of patients as active collaborators in primary care teaching, which will foster remote patient-centred communication skills in the future GP workforce. "