Departmental Prizes for Undergraduate Medical Students
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Professional Practice Prizes
- Year 1 Learning with Patients course - Professional Practice Prize
- Year 2 Learning with Patients course - Professional Practice Prize
- Year 4 GP Placement (PDII) – Professional Practice Prize
- Year 5 / GE Year 3 GP Placement (CBM) - Professional Practice Prize
These are departmental prizes for students undertaking GP practice-based placements across our courses in Years 1 & 2, Year 4, and Year 5 / GE. The prizes aim to raise students' awareness of excellence in professional behaviour and primary care scholarship.
GP tutors are encouraged to nominate any student they feel has shown excellence in their approach to their placement. This may include (but is not limited to): enthusiasm and engagement with clinical activities; punctuality and attendance; consideration of patient wellbeing; interactions with members of the practice team; critical thinking and reflection; scholarship and innovation. Tutors submit feedback to explain their nomination. At the end of the academic year, the central Primary Care Teaching Group will consider all nominations and award one prize for each course.
Details of these prizes are given on the relevant course Canvas pages.
The value of each prize £250
The prize winners will include a letter of recognition and a certificate from the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences.
Academic prize winners academic year 2025-26
Year 1 Learning with Patients - Professional Practice Prize Winner: Atitiya Vichayanrat, nominated by Dr Lorna Monteith
Atitiya Vichayanrat
Atitiya Vichayanrat was nominated by Dr Lorna Monteith, at Summertown Health Centre. This award recognises outstanding professional behaviour, including engagement with clinical activities, punctuality/attendance, commitment to self-development, consideration of patient wellbeing and interactions with members of the practice team. Atitiya will receive a letter and certificate of recognition, as well as £250.
Dr Monteith’s views are as follows:
'Tiya has been an absolute joy to teach. She has attended all sessions, read the course material and prepared fully, arrived promptly in professional attire, and engaged in an active, enthusiastic and positive way. She brings a calm but mature energy to the sessions and is always keen to get involved, ask questions and challenge herself and others to think more. She is respectful, gentle and kind in her interactions with her colleagues. She steps up, tries new things and is willing to take the lead but also gives others space, positively encouraging their contributions and feeding off these to create more learning.
It is really rare for someone so early in training to show such a natural and mature bedside manner. She connects empathically through a genuine interest in her patients. The patients have commented upon this and I actually found it really moving to watch her consult. She couples this with academic rigour and critical thinking that is really well developed. She thinks holistically and laterally, shares her views and questions things robustly. She reflects on consultation dynamics and patient motivations, including psychosocial elements of scenarios, in a patient-centred way. She is truly brilliant.'
Year 2 Learning with Patients - Professional Practice Prize Joint Winners: Faith Williams and Geena Capps
 Faith Williams
Faith Williams was nominated by Dr. Rachel Ward at Woodlands Medical Centre. Her comments are as follows: 'Faith has been an outstanding, engaged student this year. She coordinates the sessions with me and arranges transport, etc., for group. She is responsive and professional if there are any issues with sessions, etc. She has attended every session and, more importantly, clearly prepares on the topic before each session to get the most out of them. She has had excellent feedback from my colleagues when she has shadowed them. Her interactions with patients are mature, empathetic and use all of the communication skills techniques we have taught. She is naturally a warm communicator, and patients respond to her and engage with her well. She understands and respects the needs of different patients and changes her communication accordingly, which is very unusual at this stage. She is developing a passion around health inequality issues and approaches patients very holistically, considering their social and medical complexity in a mature way. She reflects very well on how she needs to develop her consulting skills and clinical knowledge and makes realistic learning plans. Faith always contributes to sessions very well and it is clear that her colleagues appreciate her input.' |
Geena Capps was nominated by Dr. Andrew Schuman at 19 Beaumont Street Surgery. Dr. Schuman had the following to say: Geena has been one of the most outstanding and enthusiastic medical students I have ever taught—and I’ve been teaching on the Patient & Doctor course (now Learning from Patients) for nearly 20 years. She has an impressively natural, facilitative, and patient-centred approach with all the patients she’s interviewed these past 2 years. She also has a genuine feeling (and respect) for their well-being. Her contributions to the group discussions afterwards (and in her reflective pieces of writing) are at least several years ahead of her preclinical status in terms of sophistication of thought, clinical application, and critical thinking. Her commitment to self-development was recently highlighted by her winning a prestigious essay competition, following her interviewing a patient with a rare disease. ' |
Final Honours School (FHS) prize
The FHS project prizes are new for this year. Supervisors were invited to nominate students whom they felt were eligible for the prize, and the final decisions were made by a judging panel comprising primary care educators and researchers.
The aim of the prize is to celebrate undergraduate academic excellence in the field of Primary Care and Applied Health research. Its purpose is to reward students who complete outstanding FHS research projects in the NDPCHS each year. In doing so, it will raise the profile of both NDPCHS FHS opportunities and academic primary care amongst the undergraduate population. It is hoped this will lead to more students considering academic primary care as an exciting and fulfilling career option. The prize winners were selected from FHS project supervisor nominations, not based on academic marks.
Criteria include: originality/innovation, appropriateness/rigour of methods, data analysis, critical thinking and reflection, relevance/contribution to the field, presentation and communication and evidence of student engagement with wider work of the department.
FHS Primary care project prize winner Ava Milne
Ava Milne
Ava Milne is the winner of the prize. She was nominated by Dr Helene-Mari Van Der Westhuizen. Ava will receive a letter and certificate of recognition, as well as £200.
Her supervisor’s feedback is as follows:
"Ava has produced a project of outstanding quality. I have been impressed by the level of her academic writing, and her efforts in pursuing new opportunities to disseminate her findings more widely. Her work has been accepted for an oral presentation at the International Lung Union conference which is taking place in Copenhagen in November 2025. This is a highly competitive international conference, and to receive an oral presentation slot is truly testament to her hard work. She has also delivered an excellent presentation to health systems meeting in Oxford. She is currently in the process of developing her project into an academic manuscript, despite the ongoing demands of her course, and is making excellent progress. I can highly commend her for this award. She has displayed professionalism, commitment and an excellent academic skill set that will stand her in good stead for a clinical academic career."
FHS primary care project highly commended nominee Emily Williams
Emily Williams
Emily was nominated by Dr Nicholas Jones. Emily will receive a letter and certificate of recognition as well as £100. Her supervisor’s feedback is as follows:
"I was very impressed by Emily's maturity and commitment to the project. There was an unexpectedly large number of relevant papers with a consequent significant volume of work but Emily completed this diligently. Emily also contributed to wider team meetings and departmental sessions, such as presenting her project to junior trainees on behalf of NDPCHS".
Well done to Ava and Emily on this achievement!
Martin Lawrence Oxford–Nordic Medical Scholarship
The Martin Lawrence Scholarship is a reciprocal exchange initiative enabling medical students from Oxford and Nordic institutions to experience primary care practices in their respective countries, fostering cross-cultural learning and comparative healthcare insights.
The award was established in the memory of Dr Martin Lawrence, a renowned academic and acting leader of Oxford's Primary Care Department, whose brilliant career was cut short by his untimely passing in 1999 at just 55 years of age. Known for his passion for teaching and dedication to both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education, Dr Lawrence also had personal ties with the Nordic countries. This scholarship continues his legacy, fostering collaboration and mutual learning between Oxford and Nordic medical communities.
Antonia-Olivia (Annie) Roberts is the most recent recipient of the scholarship. Annie shares her reflections on studying primary care in Malmö, Sweden as a result of receiving the scholarship in a blog post here.
Antonia-Olivia (Annie) Roberts
Final year medical students are eligible to apply for the Martin Lawrence Scholarship. You have been sent an email with the details. The deadline for applications is 28th October 2025 and you will be informed of the outcome by 11th November 2025.
The Moher Prize for Undergraduate General Practice
The Moher Prize was launched in 2019. It is a university award that seeks to promote innovation in primary care by the next generation of doctors. It is open to Year 5 students and encourages them to develop their knowledge and skills beyond the standard requirements. The emphasis is on creating work that is inspirational and original, ideally leading to an improvement in care for patients.
News
Ryan Danvers
The 2024 winner of the Moher Prize was Ryan Danvers with an innovative project promoting improved care for patients with Parkinson's disease.
"I am delighted to be the winner of the Moher Prize, as this was a great opportunity to engage my interests in EDI and innovation to devise novel solutions to critical problems affecting the lives of patients.
My project focused on creating a more equitable pathway for adult ADHD diagnosis in primary care, inspired by the prolonged waiting times individuals face in the current system offered by the NHS. Unfortunately, overwhelmed ADHD assessment pathways have forced those who can afford it to seek private assessment, further exacerbating pre-existing health inequities.
Acknowledging the severe impact of untreated ADHD on education, employment, relationships, finances, and overall well-being, I saw this as an opportunity to work towards creating a more equitable solution to this problem. Within this project, I explored the opinions of GPs from 19 Beaumont Street on two proposed ways primary care could help, via: 1) improved recognition of ADHD, particularly within underserved groups, and 2) up-skilling clinicians to diagnose ADHD within primary care.
I hope the insights gained from this project set the foundation for a more elaborate investigation into stakeholders’ perspectives in the future, to potentially influence future revision of the adult ADHD assessment pathway."
External Prizes
There are a number of national Primary Care prizes for undergraduate students and we encourage you to apply. Please see links below for some examples.
NIHR School for Primary Care Research (SPCR) George Lewith Prize
2025 Joint Winners: Fifth-year medical students Milou Ottolini and Dhanush Ammineni
Milou Ottolini (left) and Dhanush Ammineni (right)
Society for Academic Primary Care Medical Student Prize
(Previous Oxford undergraduate winners include: Martha Hughes – 2023; Hettie Davis – 2022)