The universal GP Training website for everyone, not just Bradford. Created in 2002 by Dr Ramesh Mehay
Richard Dawson
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Bradford VTS was created by Dr. Ramesh Mehay, a Programme Director for Bradford GP Training Scheme back in 2001. Over the years, it has seen many permutations. At the time, there were very few resources for GP trainees and their trainers so Bradford decided to create one FOR EVERYONE.
So, we see Bradford VTS as the INDEPENDENT vocational training scheme website providing a wealth of free medical resources for GP trainees, their trainers and TPDs everywhere and anywhere. We also welcome other health professionals – as we know the site is used by both those qualified and in training – such as Associate Physicians, ANPs, Medical & Nursing Students.
Our fundamental belief is to openly and freely share knowledge to help learn and develop with each other. Feel free to use the information – as long as it is not for a commercial purpose.
We have a wealth of downloadable resources and we also welcome copyright-free educational material from all our users to help build our rich resource (send to bradfordvts@gmail.com).
Our sections on (medical) COMMUNICATION SKILLS and (medical) TEACHING & LEARNING are perhaps the best and most comprehensive on the world wide web (see white-on-black menu header section on the homepage).
Csa practice can be difficult as a person assessing aswell as playing the patient
Perhaps reviewing videos of csa practice will be useful to overcome this
1:1 Trainer / GPR CSA practise – has more limitations than I had fully appreciated with the serious multitasking required by the trainer. Doing this with 2 or more trainees probably would work better by being able to share the acting and feedback roles.
Yes, doing the role playing and assessing at the same time can be a hard thing to do at first. But it gets easier the more you do it. In the same way – when you were a medical student, you were getting used to the type of medical questions to ask (for example when reviewing the clinical systems) and sometimes lost ‘the story’ in doing so – but now you can ask the right questions AND listen to the patient’s narrative at the same time.
Videoing the role playing and doing the analysis afterwards is a good way to preserve the role playing function for those of you who wish to do this.
There was some discussion as to whether this makes a difference to the CSA results – I personally think it does, but it depends how you do it. Yes, they are getting CSA practice in their small groups and perhaps at HDR. But for me, I am the trainer that sees their consulting regularly and can see how their “performance” marries with that and whether it needs changing.
Don’t forget, you don’t need to do a whole case and give feedback afterwards (sometimes you can lose the valuable moment if you rely on this) – instead consider the start-stop method.
How about getting the trainer to be the examinee – and the trainee to play the patient. In that way, the trainee can see what they are looking for in the case actively. Gets them thinking.
PS Loads of good CSA books out there. So, don’t need to rely on web cases.