Resources

Learning about health inequalities with community partners

Imperial College London

• Inequalities
• Patient partnership

Imperial's undergraduate primary care education unit has a Community Collaboration Lead, who works with community organisations, including through a community partner advisory group. This lets the communities those organisations serve help shape the medicine course. Community partners help write case studies, people with lived experience share their perspectives in audio recordings, and some sessions are taught jointly with community partners. Placements focus on working with people who are often excluded, such as people experiencing homelessness. Each year, on their GP placements, Imperial's future doctors complete assessed projects with community organisations, many of them on health inequalities, and the unit feeds what they learn back into the course.

Health coaching for everyone in Year 2

Imperial College London

• Patient partnership
• Prevention

Imperial College School of Medicine trains everyone in Year 2 in health coaching: the skills behind personalised care, shared decision-making and trauma-informed care. They learn the principles online, practise in pairs in their communication skills sessions, then hold supervised coaching conversations on their GP placement with patients who have a long-term condition and want to change a health behaviour, such as diet, exercise or smoking. Imperial trained its communication skills tutors in health coaching and supports the GP tutors who supervise. Its online course, Health Coaching Conversations, is free to join.

Health Coaching Conversations, on Coursera

The Frailty Academy in a new medical school

University of Surrey

• Prevention
• Health creation
• Interprofessional education

As a new medical school, the University of Surrey has built longitudinal and interprofessional learning into its course, in settings such as Hospital at Home and community services. Its course includes the Frailty Academy, a training programme delivered with partners that equips the wider health and care workforce to give person-centred care to people living with frailty. The Academy helps professionals prevent frailty and manage it before it reaches a crisis, and extends that learning to older people, their carers and families. It helps local teams care for people closer to home, working with hospital trusts, the voluntary sector, adult social care and the allied health professions.