Early student-patient contacts in general practice: an approach based on educational principles.

Background: Clinical teaching and learning is generally seen as an educationally sound approach, but the clinical environment does not always offer optimal conditions to facilitate students' learning processes.

Aims: To show how insights on constructing a good learning environment for student-patient contacts in real practice can be translated into an undergraduate clinical general practice programme in Year 3 and to study its feasibility.

Method: Literature search, yielding starting points for the development of the new programme and questionnaire evaluation of the programme.

Results: Six starting points for a good learning environment for early student-patient contacts: continuing exposure to patients,transformation of experience into knowledge, active role of students, supervision and feedback, time and space for teaching and teacher training were translated into a the new programme. The evaluation showed that the programme was feasible and well received by students and GPs, although some improvements are possible.

Conclusion: In a curriculum with clear goals for early student-patient contacts, it is feasible to implement an early clinical programme in general practice based on educational principles.