Living Anatomy Models- their contribution to the development of the good patient/doctor relationship.

Aim: To develop a strong sense of humanity in the first year medical students’ when dealing with future patients. Background: Living Anatomy Models (LAMs) play an exceptional role in medical student teaching and learning. Physical examination of LAMs by students during first year teaching sessions is, in many cases, their first contact with the potential patient. Research shows that medical students regard such sessions as clinically relevant (Chinnah et al, 2011). However, our teaching experience shows that during these sessions there is the potential for the LAM to be treated as a subject rather than an individual e.g. avoiding conversation with the LAM related to the examination. It is vital that during these sessions the students treat the LAM as an individual or potential patient, rather than merely a ‘model’, developing good communication and examination skills. Our goal is to determine how the students and LAMs view each other and whether improvement is required to ensure that the students’ get the best possible learning experience from these sessions. We will follow the development of such skills throughout the first two years of medical programme. Methods: We will design a strict code of practice related to LAM/student interaction, including examples of desired behaviour, assessed formatively at the end of the session. We will determine both the students’ and LAMs opinion of their interactions in the small group setting and establish whether stronger guidelines are required to improve doctor/patient competencies in the Clinical skills setting.