Teaching in partnership: linking a medical school and a community trust.

Since 1997, the Croydon and Surrey Downs Community NHS Trust, together with the Department of General Practice and Primary Care at Guy's, King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine, King's College London, has offered a community-based special study module to second year medical students. The module offered an opportunity to learn how people living with a chronic infection, such as HIV/AIDS, cope with their condition while being looked after by a multidisciplinary team in the community. This article describes how interprofessional teaching and supervision between community nurse specialists and medical students, with the involvement of multidisciplinary and community-based teachers, enabled active engagement of students in their learning. We also discuss the learning outcomes for the students and the benefits for the community trust staff in the context of interprofessional teaching.