Help Train the Next Generation of Doctors

Would you like to Help Train the Next Generation of Doctors?

Can you Spare Time to Speak to Medical Students about your Medical Condition(s) at Health Education Wessex in Otterbourne?

My name is Dr. Stephanie Hughes and I am a GP who also teaches medical students from the University of Southampton. This academic year 2018-2019 I will be teaching a course called Medicine in Practice for first year and second year (typically aged 18-20) medical students on Monday (second years) and Thursday (first years) afternoons at the Health Education Wessex building in Sparrowgrove, Otterbourne. The course involves the students meeting and talking to real-life “patients” about what life is like living with a medical condition and how it affects them. I am looking for people who live with a medical condition (mental health conditions would be especially welcomed) and who would be willing to speak to a group of six medical students for about 20 minutes. I will be with you and the students throughout and am fully CRB checked. The meetings with the students would either only involve talking; you would not need to be examined (unless you are willing and happy to be).

The students attend the course for a total of eleven sessions between October and May. The sessions are pre-arranged and the dates are fixed; the sessions usually only happen in University term time. Each session will look in detail at a particular aspect of human physiology and pathology, and any medical condition at all would provide the students with a very rich and rewarding learning opportunity as they begin to grasp the techniques of taking a medical history and performing a medical examination. The students are often very nervous to begin with but always, without fail, tell me how much they value the early patient contact that they are offered as Southampton undergraduates in the Medicine in Practice courses. The key skill that the students are developing over the courses is that of displaying empathy and good communication, which is so important to patients. The sessions particularly concentrate on the heart, lungs, nervous system, mind and mood, bones and joints, and abdomen but the students and I would be thrilled to include in our sessions anyone with any condition that they are willing to discuss, irrespective of how significant or long-standing it might be.

I look forward to hearing from you – thank you for reading this! Stephanie

If you feel you can help out, and would like to hear more, please do email me at or call 07718392977 and I would be delighted to discuss it more with you. I am not able to offer payment for the sessions, but you would be able to have the satisfaction of knowing that you have helped to train the next generation of our nation’s doctors. It is often great fun and very interesting.