We believe that educators who are explicitly taught linguistic strategies for how to manage feedback in BTEs might manage learning more effectively. For example, clinicians might maximise learning moments during BTEs by avoiding abrupt or ambiguous feedback practices. Embedded correction strategies can enhance student participation by guiding students towards the correct answer. Clinician corrections can sensitively manage student face-saving by minimising the exposure of student error to patients. Furthermore, we believe that the effective practices highlighted by our analysis might facilitate successful transformation of feedback in action into feedback for action.

The suggestion that increased consultation length leads to improved patient satisfaction has some evidence, albeit uncertain. Importantly there are other determinants within the doctor-patient consultation that themselves may be responsible for this improved satisfaction and it is these we investigate in this paper. A systematic review of PubMed and associated papers was carried out using search terms ‘family practice consultation length’, ‘general practice consultation length’, ‘local health authority consultation length’ and ‘primary care consultation length’. 590 papers were originally selected using these search terms, post scoring this number became 9. The results obtained support the idea that consultation length does not directly improve consultation outcome, but rather there are variables integrated within the consultation affecting this. Increased time purely allows a physician to implement management, particularly relating to psychosocial aspects.

BackgroundBurns are common in the UK and many of the 30,000 newly qualified doctors there will be faced with managing them in their first few years of practice. We are concerned that doctors are leaving medical school without adequate teaching on burns and therefore not prepared to manage burns competently. The aim of this study was to assess the graduating doctors self-declared knowledge of basic burns pathology as well as their knowledge and confidence in treating burns. We also wanted to assess whether students felt that their undergraduate course offered burns teaching, either formally or informally.MethodsWe designed a structured questionnaire with input from two experienced final year medical students, two experienced clinicians and two sociologists. Questions were designed to be open-ended in order to facilitate varied and circumstantiated responses. Final year medical students, due to graduate in June 2014, were invited to take part in a survey with questions on burns management, first aid, pathology, and confidence. These results were then analyzed statistically.ResultsOf the 300 students invited to join the survey, 244 fully completed the process, representing an 81.3% response rate. Of the respondents over one-third (35%) said they had not received any teaching on burns. And less than half (45%) said they had received formal teaching. Eighty-eight percent of students identified a burn can be caused by a dry heat source; however, 17% of students failed to acknowledge that chemicals are a recognized cause of burns. Only 32% of respondents were confident with management of a burn.ConclusionsThese results suggest that there is a lack in understanding of burns management, as well as a lack of confidence in treating burns among graduating doctors. There was also a self-identified lack of teaching at an undergraduate level. These concerning results could be improved by the integration of burns into the core medical curriculum.