The Safe and Effective Clinical Outcomes (SECO) clinic: learning responsibility for patient care through simulation

This article describes a simulated General Practice clinic for medical students, which incorporates specific features to aid learning of clinical problem solving.

We outline the overall objectives of the simulation, explain the concept, and describe how the clinic works. The clinic is novel in that it utilises clinical outcomes as measures for student success in the consultation. There are no time restrictions on a consultation. Students are unobserved and have open access to clinical information and telephone advice from a senior colleague.

The achievement of the case-specific outcomes is assessed by reference to students' clinical notes and the responses of the simulated patients to specific scenario-related questions. Following the clinic there is a debrief session, and students are provided with the evidence base and outcomes for each scenario.

The clinic has been part of our undergraduate curriculum since 2004. Collectively, students rate it as their most effective learning experience.