Patient Partners are volunteer community patients with chronic illness who partner with academic staff at the Clinical School to educate medical students, which serve to complement and enhance existing hospital and general practice-based learning.
We believe that every person living with an illness has valuable experiences and special knowledge of their condition to share. Combined, this knowledge and experience provides significant learning benefits for the young doctors in training.
Patient Partner opportunities
We value any contribution to medical student education that you are able to make. As such, we offer a variety of ways to get involved.
The Patient Partner Program (P3)
P3 patients volunteer their time to talk to and be examined by medical students in small groups about their medical conditions and experiences, guided by an academic tutor (usually a GP). The students value these sessions as a way to gain insight into the complexities of managing patients in a whole-of-person way. The P3 sessions often run during the daytime on a weekday, with a maximum commitment of 3 hours once or twice a year, and volunteers are offered light refreshments as well as assistance with transport as required.
The Patient Partner program (P3) forms part of the curriculum at Medicine, University of Tasmania. P3 began at the Launceston Clinical School in 2005 and won a highly prestigious national teaching excellence award from the Office for Learning and Teaching for Programs that Enhance Learning, particularly for Innovation in Curricula, Learning and Teaching.
The awards were officially presented on 19 November 2012 in Canberra by Senator Chris Evans, the Minister for Tertiary Education.
Co-facilitation of learning and education
Patient Partners can also be involved in larger group sessions to help educate students about specific medical conditions, in collaboration with a Launceston Clinical School academic or visiting lecturer.
Patient Partners are able to offer unique and individual perspectives about how their experiences of medical conditions and their treatment may align or differ from ‘the textbook’ experience and provide a unique perspective for case base learning.
Co-facilitation opportunities often involve an hour or two of your time per year, at times that are negotiated between patient partners and the lecturer.
Quotes from Launceston Clinical School Patient Partner Program
What do Patient Partners said about being involved in teaching medical students:
"It made me feel more confident in talking about my condition."
"I probably got as much out of it as the students did."
"It's definitely a mutual exchange of thoughts."
"… it's made me less ashamed of my mental problems … confirmation that I'm not perceived as a nut case."
"… to have cancer and be able to tell from your story of what you went through can only benefit them [student doctors] in understanding."
What do tutors and students said about having volunteer patients involved in teaching:
“Very glad we have it! Enables us to encounter complex conditions.” (student 2024)
“It was a very hands-on experience and I think it was very helpful.” (student 2024)
“A great program, thank you to everyone – participants and LCS for running these sessions!” (student 2024)
“ The patients are keen to teach the students. They are very generous particularly allowing the students to practice sensitive physical examinations on them. They share their difficult times with terrible diagnoses and the health system. Students often learnt from their experiences and hope to prevent the replication of those mistakes.” (tutor 2021)
Want to know more?
For more information, to discuss your specific situation or to sign up please get in touch with the Launceston Clinical School.