Watching videos of your self in live action is an incredibly powerful and invaluable tool.  

• It shows exactly what you did.   No-one can ever give you direct feedback as much as a video can of yourself!
• It shows you patient behaviours – things that you might have overlooked or missed.
• It helps pin point parts of the consultation where the doctor-patient relationship is either really good or really strained – and how adjustments could have been made.

Although GP training requires you to do 3 COTs in ST1 and 12 in ST3, we suggest you do lots more.  Even if you have got the minimum number of COTS (note: minimum number is mistakingly interpreted by trainees as maximum number!) – do more – because you will always identify gaps in your performance, which can then be worked on.

If you imagine yourself as a block of Swiss Cheese, like the swiss cheese you will have a firmly established body.  But that body has holes in it.  Video is one powerful way of identifying those holes and doing something to fill them up.  This will then help make you more ‘solid’ and complete.