Shivani Tanna

Dr Tanna is giving medical students a chance to sample the myriad of opportunities offered by training as a GP, showing them how the basic science they are learning translates into clinical practice.

Last year, the Year 3 course director at Imperial College London created a new 10-week attachment, the ‘Medicine in the Community’ apprenticeship, for medical students. It gives them the opportunity to experience sessions in prison, hospice, pharmacy, ambulance, minor surgery and many more. This was successfully piloted for 60 students and is due to be rolled out to the entire year group of 150 students next year.

She has also impressed colleagues with her passion for improving consultation skills with simple tools. She won the Society for Academic Primary Care’s Dangerous Ideas competition for a new mnemonic for medical students meant to improve the quality of psychosocial history – IMPACT Q (ideals, mood, provisions for self/family, ambitions, capability and caring roles, tasks and traditions, quality of life). Her debate and analysis article about it has been published in the BJGP. Dr Tanna’s teaching received the Imperial College President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in June this year.

GP nominators were impressed by her ‘inspiring’ and ‘forward-thinking’ work.

And alongside all this, Dr Tanna has found the time in the past year to become a published children’s author, with several books, including The Chocolate Breathing Dragon.