LIC in the time of COVID: experiences of LIC tutors during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland.

In March 2020, due to the escalating global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, clinical placements for most medical students in the UK were suspended. A phased resumption of clinical placements started at the beginning of academic year 2020/2021. For the Scottish Graduate Entry Medicine programme (ScotGEM), 2020/21 was the first year that Dundee School of Medicine's comprehensive LIC was extended to all 54 students in the penultimate year of the ScotGEM programme.

Enhancing the collective, protecting the personal: the valuable role of composite narratives in medical education research.

Narrative research approaches provide the opportunity for constructing a detailed understanding of lived experiences relevant to medical education, in areas such as illness narratives, explorations of doctor-patient relationships, and the development of professional identities in students and educators. The benefits of the depth of data gathered in narrative research are, however, counterbalanced by possible weaknesses relating to a focus on individual cases and the risk of identification of participants where subjects are sensitive or unique. To address these concerns, researchers from a variety of social science disciplines, carrying out research employing a range of methodological approaches, have begun to use 'composite narratives' in which the commonalities in the experiences of research participants are combined to create joint narrative or narratives which illustrate participants' shared experiences.

Disrupting the consultation: students empowering patients in a longitudinal clerkship.

Although well-established worldwide as a method of clinical medical education, Longitudinal Integrated Clerkships (LICs) are green shoots in the UK medical education landscape. The first comprehensive LIC in the UK was introduced in Dundee, Scotland in 2016. Substantial work has been carried out to evaluate the experiences of students and primary care tutors involved in the Dundee LIC, but the experiences of the patients LIC students cared for had not been evaluated.

By accident or design? An exploration of the career pathways, experiences and identities of academic GPs using composite narratives.

At a time when UK general practice is facing significant challenges and departments of academic general practice in UK universities are in decline, this cross-sectional qualitative case study examines the experiences of general practitioner (GP) academics in a Scottish university department of general practice undergraduate education. The study explores GPs' reasons for entering academic careers, their routes into academic careers and their experiences of balancing clinical and academic work through examining the individual narratives of GP academics. Data were gathered through autobiographical written narrative, individual interviews and an autoethnographic study, and were analysed using a thematic narrative approach.