Early student-patient contacts in general practice: an approach based on educational principles

Clinical teaching and learning is generally seen as an educationally sound approach, but the clinical environment does not always offer optimal conditions to facilitate students' learning processes.

To show how insights on constructing a good learning environment for student-patient contacts in real practice can be translated into an undergraduate clinical general practice programme in Year 3 and to study its feasibility.

Literature search, yielding starting points for the development of the new programme and questionnaire evaluation of the programme.

Six starting points for a good learning environment for early student-patient contacts: continuing exposure to patients,transformation of experience into knowledge, active role of students, supervision and feedback, time and space for teaching and teacher training were translated into a the new programme. The evaluation showed that the programme was feasible and well received by students and GPs, although some improvements are possible.

In a curriculum with clear goals for early student-patient contacts, it is feasible to implement an early clinical programme in general practice based on educational principles.