Learning through experience at the Teaching Clinic

Anna Bernard recently joined LCTA as Teaching Clinic Practice Manager.  Here she tells us a bit about herself and explains how the clinic works.

Anna tells us what happens in the LCTA Teaching Clinic

 

I’ve been a qualified acupuncturist for seven years.  I ran the Neal’s Yard therapy rooms five years ago and then left to focus on my own practice.  I worked with Zita West for a year and set up a vocal clinic specialising in singing and presenting for voiceovers which is the other thing that I do to earn a living.  Coming back into such a creative college environment is great; the student environment is fantastic, it’s the best environment to learn in.

In my role as Teaching Clinic Practice Manager I co-ordinate all of the student clinics across acupuncture, herbs and tui na.  I look after both the day-to-day and the strategic management of the clinic, looking at the patient experience and working out how we can give our students the best possible teaching.  This includes ensuring that we attract enough patients for our students to learn from, so I am looking at ways of branching out into the community.

The ideal patient is probably a difficult one: whether it’s a difficult case or just a difficult personality; for instance, a patient who turns up late, or one who doesn’t turn up at all, although it is nice to have a patient who they treat weekly for 12 weeks and see them get better – as this gives the students confidence.  But whilst they are a student it’s also good to have a difficult case so that they can experience as much as possible before they graduate and set up on their own.

The final year students have four clinic blocks lasting eight weeks each and the number of patients is built up slowly but surely so that in the first block they will treat one to two patients per week and by the fourth block, they will have a fairly solid clinic day.  We make sure that they have enough patients to be continually learning.

Part of the clinic day is a two-hour discussion as a group with the clinic supervisor.  There is a set amount that has to be taught in the clinic for each block and the discussion time is also used to discuss stuff that comes up with patients.  So if a student has an interesting case, they have the opportunity to discuss how best to deal with it and all the students have a chance to learn from it through discussion.

The Teaching Clinic gives the students a really valuable insight into what it is like to run a practice.  They get to experience the good and the bad days, the easy and the difficult patients and they learn how to deal with their personal issues – it’s a real journey.

This group of third years is incredible, they have been so good and all the supervisors are really pleased with their progress in this first clinic block.   They work fast and are focused, they’re a very strong group.  This is really exciting for me and you can really feel it in the clinic as well – people are coming back and booking in all the time.  Part of the requirement of the clinical year is that students see and retain a certain number of patients, so this cohort have got off to a great start.

There are clinics available every day apart from Wednesdays and if you don’t mind being observed, it’s a fantastic way to get treated.

For more information about the LCTA Teaching Clinic see the news and information section of the blog.