The GP curriculum is an enormous achievement. It is the most comprehensive guide to the knowledge, skills and professional attitudes required of a doctor undertaking independent practice in the contemporary UK National Health Service. However, like the scope of generalism itself, it is by its nature large; to get at the heart of general practice, the core of our discipline, you must read the first curriculum statement “Being a GP”.
Because of the scale of the curriculum it is not anticipated that each trainee will cover every aspect of general practice during their three short years of training. In any event the essence of being a GP is dealing with permanently changing knowledge and working in that uncertain territory where professional judgement in particular clinical situations makes up for a lack of absolute evidence pertaining to the circumstances. We aim to empower trainees so that by the end of their training they are capable of managing uncertainty and know where to look for such answers as exist currently to the inevitable dilemmas of everyday practice. In short, we aim to teach each GP to utilise reflection to maximise their learning and development.
To start what can seem a bewildering journey to becoming a GP we have some helpful guides:
- One written by The Academy of Royal Medical Colleges entitled “Improving feedback and reflection to improve learning A practical guide for trainees and trainers” – a fantastic introduction to reflection
The GP School appreciates that not all colleagues involved in general practice education – for example Clinical Supervisors in other specialties – have the time to read the entire GP curriculum. To maximise the learning in posts within a training programme, understanding the possible learning outcomes within the context of the curriculum allows learners and supervisors to focus clinical experience optimally. We have therefore produced this series of short curricular learning outcomes which can be downloaded from this page. Each specialty document created here is not exhaustive and should only be used as a reference guide which would facilitate at least 90% of the curriculum coverage. (with many thanks to Dr Krish T Radhakrishnan who led this work).
The GP School asks Clinical Supervisors to select appropriate short learning outcomes for any post GP specialty trainees are undertaking. These should be discussed and agreed with the trainee at the start of their post.
