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 wellbeing. 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
To be announced in due course. We are currently working on a submission process for this prize (which will be released shortly). If you are a student who has recently completed their FHS project (2024-25 academic year), please contact us if you would like to find out more and submit your project for consideration.
final Honours School (FHS)
This prize is awarded each academic year for the best FHS project undertaken within NDPCHS. The prize will be judged by a panel that includes members of the department familiar with supervising these projects, the Academic Lead for Engagement with Academic Primary Care (Dr Alison Convey) and the Department Coordinator for FHS (Dr David Nunan).
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.
Year 4 GP Placement – Reflection Prize
The Reflection Prize is awarded to the student who has most effectively embraced the remit of the Extended Patient Contact Report. The winner is expected to have produced a thorough and detailed report which demonstrates exceptional reflection.
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.
Martin Lawrence Oxford–Nordic Medical Scholarship
We are delighted to invite applications from final year medical students for the Martin Lawrence Scholarship.
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.
The Moher Prize for Undergraduate General Practice
The Moher Prize was launched in 2019. It is a University award which 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 which 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 wellbeing, 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’ perspective 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.
Society for Academic Primary Care Medical Student Prize
(Previous Oxford undergraduate winners include: Martha Hughes – 2023; Hettie Davis – 2022)