People are asked to become volunteer patients to help the next generation of medical professionals by a leading university.
The University of Central Lancashire’s School of Medicine is looking for people to help with the training of medical, physician associate and vision sciences’ students.
The volunteer patients would need to attend UCLan’s Whitehaven campus and allow the students to record their medical histories and, in some cases, undertake physical examinations.
Volunteers, who can commit to as many or as few sessions as they like throughout the academic year, are required to help improve the students’ communication and examination skills.
The school is looking for people from a variety of ages, ethnicities and backgrounds to reflect the patients they will be treating while on placements in the region’s hospitals and opticians.
To ensure the students carry out authentic assessments, the volunteers need to be willing to allow hands-on examinations. It is also helpful if volunteers have a range of medical conditions to allow students to gain insight and knowledge but it is not essential.
Professor Cathy Jackson, executive dean of UCLan’s faculty of clinical and biomedical sciences, said: “At UCLan, we’re training the next generation of medical professionals and we want to ensure they have excellent communication, patient care and decision-making skills.
“Research shows more than 80 per cent of the diagnosis procedure is based on listening to the patient so it’s crucial our students can combine their classroom-based theory and knowledge with the hands-on opportunities.
“By working with real-life volunteers the students learn to listen to their patients’ personal experiences of health care and ask the right questions to understand their problems.
“In addition, they also have responsive bodies which are thoroughly examined away from pressured clinical environments and those volunteers can provide feedback directly to the students on their performance and behaviours.”
Once registered as a volunteer patient, invites will be sent for specific teaching sessions or assessments every month but most sessions only require a handful of volunteers.
If you are interested in becoming a patient volunteer, email: [email protected]
