The ability to make diagnoses by listening to patients describe their symptoms is one of the most fundamental skills in medicine. Speaking Clinically is a video archive of 900 patient interviews, forming a comprehensive learning resource of case studies on different diseases. It is available to every UK medical student as part of their universities’ memberships of the Medical Schools Council.
The resource provides medical students the opportunity to listen to real patients talk about their diseases, furthering students’ understanding and practice. The patients talk frankly about their medical conditions and the interviews are unrehearsed, capturing the nuances of communication. As well as video content, each case is accompanied by a synopsis and a link to further reading and theory.
Access to Speaking Clinically is managed locally by medical schools. If you are a medical student or medical school staff member seeking to access the videos, you should ask your medical school to give you the contact details of your school administrator.
Speaking Clinically was written, filmed and edited in its entirety by Professor Andy Levy, Professor emeritus at the University of Bristol and run via his company Bristol Medical Pro Ltd with support from the university. It was kindly given to the Medical Schools Council in 2020 as a resource to offer to UK medical schools.
The Medical Schools Council acknowledges that the patient videos within Speaking Clinically lack sufficient diversity and believes that this should be rectified to improve the effectiveness of the resource. It is important to note that Speaking Clinically was donated to MSC in 2020 to help medical schools provide online learning for their students during the Covid-19 pandemic. The resource was written, filmed and edited in its entirety by Professor Andrew Levy who over a period of twenty years carried out interviews with his patients in the Bristol area, resulting in consultations with predominantly white patients.
Speaking Clinically is just one tool that medical schools use in a wider scheme of student education and there are other ways that medical schools can ensure students understand the importance of appreciating cultural diversity in medical education.
In the short term, the Medical Schools Council is unable to provide additional videos with more diverse patients, as we do not have access to patient videos or patients themselves. However, the Medical Schools Council welcomes support from medical schools to help us to improve the diversity on Speaking Clinically by providing updated videos. We hope this is something that we will be able to address and correct collaboratively.
The videos available in Speaking Clinically are used for teaching and research purposes and fall within the GDPR exception for endeavours serving the public interest.
Speaking Clinically only uses cookies that are essential to provide users with services they have requested. This includes the cookies that make it possible for users to stay logged into their Speaking Clinically accounts.
Speaking Clinically uses Amazon Web Services to host and deliver its video content. You can refer to the Amazon GDPR Centre for more information on how Amazon ensures that its services are GDPR compliant.
Each user’s name and email address is used to create their account. Each university manages the accounts of its Speaking Clinically users.
The Medical Schools Council may sometimes get in direct contact with registered users regarding Speaking Clinically.
The Medical Schools Council does not share users’ data as it relates to Speaking Clinically with any third parties.
Users are entitled to view, amend, or delete the personal information that is held as it relates to Speaking Clinically. To do this, in the first instance contact your university’s designated contact for Speaking Clinically. If this person is unknown, contact the Medical Schools Council.
This privacy notice was last reviewed on 7 November 2019. It is reviewed periodically.
We want as many people as possible to be able to use Speaking Clinically on a variety of devices. However, while we have made steps to improve the accessibility of the website, we know that some parts of the website are not as accessible as they could be. Due to the urgent need to provide online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, Speaking Clinically was rolled out to medical schools at speed and remains in the initial stages of its development.
Over time we plan to improve accessibility for our users. If you have any difficulty using this website, please contact us. Please be as specific as you can and let us know of ideas you have for improving our content accessibility standard.
It would not have been possible to create this educational resource without the good will of the many people who allowed their stories and images to be collected. Speaking Clinically is dedicated to their generosity.
The Medical Schools Council takes no legal or moral responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information contained on this website. In no event will the Medical Schools Council, Bristol Medical Pro Ltd or Professor Levy be liable for any decision made or action taken in reliance upon the information provided.
All of the featured patients gave their consent to the interview recordings being:
If you are one of the patients featured in the resource and would like to discuss this, please contact the Medical Schools Council.