We know that belonging strongly influences professional identity development, and yet students often feel like outsiders while they are on placement. Simple measures can make a huge difference in this area. Use their names, say hello to them when they show up to a ward round, theatre or MDT, give them small jobs (holding a patient file, looking up the patient’s obs, writing the progress note). Involving them like this takes seconds at most but will make a huge difference to the way they experience their placement and your specialty.

Current students are future colleagues. Please respect them as you would expect to be respected by them.

Students really value learning from your expertise. Teaching doesn’t have to be onerous. It could be 3 minutes on a micro-topic during the ward round, sending the student to see one of the patients you are going to see in clinic or on the round first so they can present back to you when the time comes, a 20 minute bedside chat with a willing patient with signs, supervising them putting in a cannula, or a formal 30-60 minute tutorial.

Students in year 2 are still orientating themselves to the clinical environment, so think basic general knowledge. Rolemodelling patient-centred care is a great way to teach without any additional time investment. As students progress, learning can become more advanced. Remember that a second-year student has not yet developed clinical experience, and set your expectations accordingly. Gear your teaching to a final (fourth) year student at the level you’d expect of an intern, and remember that they’re preparing to sit their medical school final assessments, not your specialty’s fellowship exams. Go for what you think they need to know as an intern. Whilst Q&A remains an important part of learning, please be supportive and avoid humiliating students.

We have resources you can tap into if you want to ensure your teaching is geared to what our learners need, including core conditions, presentations, and learning outcomes. Visit the CMEd site or email the CMEd Operations Lead Wendy Lo to access these.

Students appreciate guidance from experienced clinicians on navigating their new learning environment. If you’d like to mentor a student through their time at medical school as part of our longitudinal mentoring program, please contact our Mentoring team. You may also find that students approach you with concerns during their placement. Many of these you may be happy to address, however, we also appreciate there may be student concerns beyond your scope as a supervisor. We have a vast array of support mechanisms available for our students and we don’t expect you to be equipped to address all of these. If you find yourself in this position or are concerned about a student, you will find student support advice here.

Your students will need you to complete an end of term assessment towards the end of their time with you. These generally take 10 to 30 minutes to complete. Please be proactive with providing time to the students to do these, or delegate to an appropriate member of your team if you are not available. A mid-term check-in is not mandatory for the students, but it is a good way to find out how they are going and intervene in case of any issues early. You can find further information about assessment here.

Students sometimes require modifications whilst on placement due to living with a disability. Most commonly in recent years, this has involved adjustments around hearing or vison impairment. Please do your best to accommodate these, and get in touch with the student’s Unit Coordinator if you have any questions or need support, for example to produce any physical handouts or teaching resources in a more accessible format. When running group sessions, please use a microphone if there is one available.

We regularly survey the students to understand how they’ve found their placement. This includes feedback about the supervisors they had and the teaching they attended or engaged with. Students have the opportunity to nominate ‘Excellent Educators’ during these feedback surveys, or at any other time using a central form. These student nominations are presented to the Discipline Leads at the end of the year, who will select a nominated “Excellent Educator” to receive an Excellence in Teaching Award. The award recipient will be invited to our annual Awards evening to receive their certificate which includes the student feedback.