Primary Care Clinical Teachers Support

We would like to welcome you to the UNSW Primary Care Clinical Teachers Support Website. We appreciate the important role that General Practitioners like you play in the education of future generation of doctors.
You will find on this website information about the Primary Care course, useful downloadable forms and documents, useful clinical resources that maybe helpful to your practice and teaching, information relating to your role as a GP supervisor as well as information on opportunities for professional development as a clinical teacher.

About Us

You will be pleased to know that UNSW’s undergraduate Medicine program’s Primary Care course is taught and run by General Practitioners. The course is convened by Dr Meredith Makeham. Other campus-based GP teachers in the course include Professor Nicholas Zwar, Dr Suzanne McKenzie, Dr Susanna Petche and Dr Peter Harris. Dr Jeremy Bunker and Dr Sanjyot Vagholkar are based at the Fairfield GP Unit, where students may attend tutorials. Vanessa Green and Susan Zhang play an important role providing administrative support for the course.

About the program

General information

Primary Care is a compulsory 8-week course in Phase 3 (Years 5 and 6) of the undergraduate Medicine program at UNSW. While some teaching is delivered through formal lectures and tutorials, most of the learning takes place through student’s general practice attachments. Students are required to attend at least 50 half-day general practice sessions during the course. Please click here to have a look at the Phase 3 Primary Care GP Supervisor Handbook and here for further information on the Medicine program. Please click here to look at the Phase 3 Primary Care Course Outline for Students.

There are two assessment activities that take place during the General Practice course. The first is the Teamworks assignment where students are required to write a 1500 word essay about a patient that they saw during the attachment, particularly about how well the teamwork is going between different health providers who are involved in the patient’s care. The second assessment activity is the Clinical Roleplay Assessment that takes place in the middle of the term where students are given 20 minutes to take a history from a simulated patient, ask for appropriate examination findings, and then to advise the patient about further investigation and management. For further details on the assessment activities, please refer to the Phase 3 Primary Care GP Supervisor Handbook.

Term dates and important dates

There are five 8-week terms in a calendar year.
The term dates for 2009 are as follows: