Over 1,300 student doctors and student pharmacists in the UK have now been trained to collaborate with patients online using Patients Know Best (PKB). They are the only students who have been trained for what UK patients expect to be the norm in clinical care, paving the way for new and more effective doctor-patient relationships.
Student doctors and pharmacists at Leicester Medical School, Aston University, Birmingham and De Montfort University, Leicester have all been trained using PKB in the first three years of their undergraduate degrees.
Started by Dr Ron Hsu, medical director at Leicester University, training via Patients Know Best provides the students with real-world, practical experience of online consultation plus readies them for a career of doctor-patient collaboration and working in multidisciplinary medical teams.
Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, CEO and founder of PKB said:
“One of the biggest problems facing our healthcare systems today is that patients don’t have the data with which to manage their own, long-term care. Patients are not able to participate enough – but that’s often because doctors are seen to be in charge and to know everything.
This mindset begins at medical school where young doctors are taught that they’re the ones with all the answers. But this places a huge burden on them – and on the profession. We can solve this.
Learning via PKB means that young doctors come to know that they must work together with patients to reach solutions – that they’re on the same team with other professionals and the patient. When the medical students first saw answers from pharmacy students about a patient’s medications, they did not think they could add anything – pharmacists know more than doctors do about medicines. But doctors have plenty more to add. The next year’s medical students were caught off guard again when the volunteer patients – who had already been through one year of the program – knew more about their illnesses and PKB than the student a did. Again, there is plenty the students can still add to the conversation. And that’s what faculty push their students to learn and teach.
This will mean when they enter the real world, doctors will be better prepared to collaborate with patients and fellow professionals and that in turn, patients will feel more empowered and more able to participate in their own healthcare management and recovery.”
PKB provides our software free of charge to clinical educators. If you would like this for your team please contact us.