GP Partner scoops Outstanding GP Tutor Award
A GP partner at Lakeside Healthcare Stamford has been bestowed an Outstanding GP Tutor Award from The University of Cambridge.
Dr Sian Dronfield was one of just a handful of doctors honoured in this year's Cambridge GP society awards, in which students are asked to nominate the GP practices where they have had a particularly good experience when on placement, as well as to put forward individual GP tutors for teaching excellence prizes.
The 2020/21 Awards saw 21 nominations and just five awards handed out.
Dr Dronfield, who has been a GP since 2006 and based at Lakeside Healthcare Stamford since 2011, said: "It's great to feel recognised. We put a lot of work in to mentoring the students and because the award comes from them it's really nice to get the positive feedback.
"We always have consistently high feedback from our medical students, which is testament to the whole team - GPs, nurses and all of our practice staff who work hard to welcome them and provide them with learning opportunities, despite the challenges of COVID!"
The Coronavirus pandemic has forced Dr Dronfield and her team to amend the usual teaching methods for students this year, with most consultations being online or by telephone and the usual care home visits curtailed for students due to restrictions.
"It's been quite a hard year teaching during Covid," she said. "A lot of the learning opportunities that the students would have just haven't been able to happen, but it has taught them a whole new skillset. To get that positive feedback from them, despite the fact that we are having to teach them differently is fantastic – and very well received."
Dr Dronfield believes that the medical students enjoy their Lakeside Stamford placements because they can really get involved and they are warmly welcomed, not just by practice staff, nurses and patients, but by the whole of the local community as they live and work in Stamford.
She said: "We are very grateful to our patients who are always very supportive in engaging with our students and helping to develop our GPs of the future. The students are good for the patients because they can give them lots of time, should they need it."
The practice has been teaching Cambridge students since 2013.
Dr Dronfield said: "I think it keeps me enthusiastic about my job, current and up to date. The students are so interested and keen to learn and it reminds me how diverse the job is and how privileged I am to do it. We are very fortunate to do what we do."