For some medical students, it is necessary to undertake part-time work alongside their medical studies. Graduate students on 5-year courses, who do not receive NHS bursaries like their peers on graduate-entry courses, and students from low-income families may be in this group. The looming rise in tuition fees to £9000 per year may increase the number of students needing to work. While traditional student jobs such as bar and retail work are also open to medical students, healthcare-related jobs may be more beneficial. Healthcare assistant jobs are popular among medical students and a call has been made by Louden and Nickerson for GPs to employ students as phlebotomists.1 Here I present another option: medical records summarising.
Locum GPs and trainees, especially, may not be familiar with a patient's long history. It is helpful for a summary of the patient's history to be presented in a readily accessible format, in other words, to be summarised. A summariser reads all the correspondence in a record and highlights the pertinent details. For medical students, this is an opportunity to learn how to write clinical letters and the GP approach to a wide range of presentations. I first learned of psoriatic arthritis by noticing that many patients with psoriasis also had arthritis, before my dermatology and rheumatology rotations, showing the educational value of summarising. Students also benefit from having a paid, usually flexible, position to increase their funds. The GP benefits by having employees who do not require costly medical terminology courses, and are possibly quicker and more accurate, as students already know what medical history is relevant.
Problems could arise if the practice is located at a university campus where the student might know some of the patients registered. However, such problems could be avoided by giving students clear guidance and education on their obligations in safeguarding patient data. Doctors should also ensure that students' part-time duties do not interfere with their medical education and it may be helpful to have more than one student. To dissuade students spending too long ‘learning’ rather than summarising, my GP employer awards 10 pence per record summarised, above the basic wage.
Having assisted in the auditing of records for the QOF, I feel I have gained an insight into general practice above the level expected for a medical student. I therefore urge more GPs to consider advertising summariser jobs with their local medical schools in the first instance.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2012