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Catriona Gilmour-Hamilton and Noémi Roy joined the Medical Sciences Division in September as the joint leads for Patient Involvement in Medical Education. Their role is to help formalise and unify ways in which patients use their experience to contribute to the medical school, and teach the doctors of the future.

Catriona and Noémi commented:

"Our initial task has been to gain a better understanding of what is in place already, speaking to colleagues about their experiences, aspirations, and difficulties with patient involvement. We are joining networks of patient involvement leads from other medical schools to share best practice and to learn from their experience. We are putting together a panel of patients with an interest in teaching medical students to guide our decision making. And we are reaching out to students to create a forum that will explore how they can shape the potential for patient involvement in teaching for current and future medical students in Oxford.

Our immediate priorities are:

Put it online

We need to make patient involvement in medical education more visible online – to promote what is happening and share opportunities to get involved. We aim to create a web presence to include:

  • Stories about what is happening now in different parts of the school
  • Share examples of student and patient feedback about these activities
  • Share resources about involving patients – tools, articles, literature, ideas
  • Share examples of activity from other medical schools
  • Provide more information for patients, students and staff about how to get involved.

Advisory panels

We would like to reach out to existing patient teachers and recruit new panel members with an interest in medical learning to support and guide framework development. We would like to explore establishment of a ‘patient faculty’ bringing together patients involved in medical education to learn from and support one another. We will also revisit the PPI forum that has been run before and re-engage with students as they will be the drivers for sustained change in future. In the fullness of time, we would like to have a large group of potential patient contributors that can act as a resource for the medical school, participating in a range of activities such as sharing stories, drafting curriculum content and working with students in person. Any medical students interested in working with us, please get in touch!

Design payment procedures

One of the big issues for those who want to involve patients is the issue of payment for contributors, and how to do this without too much bureaucracy. We will aim to better understand what the obstacles are at present and attempt to identify how to improve the current situation.

Make life easier for faculty

We will draft policies and procedures to guide colleagues about how to recruit patient contributors. There is a lot of support for - and interest in - working with patients and a big part of our role will be to make it easier for colleagues to do this.

Please get in touch if you would like to find out more or get involved."

Email Catriona Gilmour-Hamilton

Email Noémi Roy