There has never been a more important time to influence the future of General Practice and the Department of Primary Care and Public Health wants to work with you to achieve this.

With responsibility for General Practice teaching as part of our undergraduate programme, the department works closely with the medical school, GPs and their Practices throughout the six years students are with us. During this time, students learn from observation of GP consultations but also through (by their third year of the degree) running their own consultations alongside their supervising GP. They are additionally taught in alternative community settings and also in department teaching sessions.

The Department provides full teacher training and refresher courses for GPs and is always ready to recruit new enthusiastic and dynamic GP teachers to teach students. The course is free if you commit to teaching students in your practice.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss the different teaching options please contact our Faculty Development Manager Nadine Engineer.

Getting involved

The majority of teaching options involve hosting and teaching medical students within a GP Practice setting. To read more about our courses please see the Undergraduate Primary Care Teaching page.

We’ll help train you in readiness to teach and in most cases will need to arrange a practice visit from our Faculty Development Manager to discuss your teaching experience and the learning environment in the Practice.  Once approved as one of our teachers and teaching practices you will then be able to host Imperial College medical students on their GP placements.

We can also offer you an opportunity to have your teaching observed and if you do start teaching for us we will also pay your Practice to help offset any loss of service costs. We are committed to providing you with ongoing lifelong teaching skills which will keep you up to date with current teaching methodologies and as such once you have become one of our teachers you would have access to our Additional Skills courses run throughout the year and our Annual Teacher’s Conference all of which are free to attend.

Support and training for GP teachers

TaCTIC: Training Course for Teachers at Imperial College

This is an interactive online course designed to give you a mix of theory and practical guidance on developing your teaching skills that can be applied in the workplace environment.

It will cover 'What is learning?', 'Learning needs assessment', 'Questioning styles', and 'Feedback.' and will help you to structure your teaching sessions. The course incorporates core aspects of clinical teaching and consistently links to medical educational theory.

The course runs for 3 hours and includes carrying out a microteach in a small group.

Attendees:
The course is open to all GPs teaching in a community or primary care setting, as well as foundation trainees, STs, nurses, HCAs and any other healthcare professionals/specialties.

Accreditation:
This course has educational accreditation by the RCGP. The RCGP Accreditation Quality Mark is an identifiable symbol of quality assurance that associates educational activities with the professionalism, expertise and commitment to the highest possible standards of general practice.  GPs can be confident this education day  has been independently assessed to ensure a consistent and high quality resource.

You will be sent a certificate of attendance following completion of the course and this will detail the amount of hours of training which may be used towards NHS appraisal. 

For those intending to teach Imperial medical students the course is mandatory in order to commence teaching.

TaCTIC pre-course video

After watching the pre course video below, you can further develop your teaching skills more formally by booking onto one of our TaCTIC course dates.

• Wednesday 8 May click here to book

We also offer Advanced Skills courses online for existing Imperial College GP teachers.

Advanced Skills for teachers at Imperial College (ASTIC)

Forthcoming courses:

• Making GP placements inclusive for neurodivergent students - Wednesday 24 April 2-4.30pm click here to book
• Health Coaching for Imperial GP clinical tutors - with TPC Health - Tuesday 11 June 9.15am-4.30pm click here to book
• Supporting students who experience discrimination in primary care settings - Wednesday 3 July 2.00pm-4.30pm click here to book

Online coaching skills courses

We have two freely accessible online courses (MOOCs) on coaching skills. Coaching Skills for Learner-Centred Conversations is a short course on the global EdX platform that explores how you can use solution-oriented coaching skills and approaches in an education context to hold more empowering conversations with learners. https://www.edx.org/course/coaching-skills-for-educators

Health Coaching Conversations is a short course on the global Coursera platform that explores key principles and skills of health coaching and how you can use these to enable more person-centred conversations, empowering patients to identify and work towards their health and wellbeing goals. https://www.coursera.org/learn/healthcoachingconversations

Supporting students experiencing discrimination during GP placements

We have developed resources for GP tutors on supporting students experiencing discrimination during their clinical placements. Please see the video below: