The initial hospital attachments consist of integrated medical and surgical firms based in the two major teaching hospitals in Liverpool. There are also hospital attachments in Reproductive Health and Child Health. In the 4 th year, each student spends the entire year in one locality. At the same time, they spend a minimum of two days a week in the hospital rotating through Medicine, Surgery, Child Health and Obstetrics and Gynaecology, with shorter periods of attachment to Geriatric Medicine, Psychiatry and Palliative Care. Emphasis Along with the increase in teaching in the community came a shift to a more holistic view of medicine.
Holistic medicine means different things to different people.
The students are asked to develop learning objectives relating to each of these themes for every module. Alongside the clinical skills course in first year, the students take a Communication Skills course. The teaching of communication skills continues at a lower intensity throughout the remaining years of the course with an emphasis on facilitated reflection on real encounters that the student has had with patients. In common with other UK medical schools, and in line with the recommendations of Tomorrow's Doctors , we have structured the content of the course into Core plus Special Studies . The Core is taken by all the students and Special Studies are organised into 6 modules spread over the first four years of the course.