Aarti is a GP and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Academy of Primary Care. Her main areas of interest and expertise are supporting the development of person-centred practice and environmentally sustainable clinical healthcare. She works with Professor Joanne Reeve to support the WISE, Catalyst and Phoenix programmes of work.
Aarti started working in medical education in 2007 as a small group GP tutor and then joined the Academic Unit of Primary Medical Care at Sheffield Medical School in 2009. Her initial focus was on diversity education within the medical curriculum, including instilling values of curiosity, empathy, respect and self-awareness as core attributes of professional medical practice. Her diversity curriculum has been cited as example of good practice by the GMC and led to her nomination for the inaugural ‘Portrait of a Woman prize’ for inspirational women. In 2011 she completed a Masters in Higher Education in 2011.
Aarti subsequently expanded her interest to understanding the values underpinning a person-centred approach such as democratic dialogue, partnership and patient empowerment. Central to this is an exploration of the role of the doctor, what informs it, how it has changed and how doctors can facilitate health. Between 2009 and 2018 she implemented several curricular innovations which aimed to support person-centred practice. These innovations were designed to be delivered to all medical students within the core curriculum, have successfully stood the test of time and have been published in the medical education literature. Examples include:
- GP-facilitated small group teaching in longitudinal hospital placements
- Advance care planning consultation skills teaching
- Consulting through interpreters skills teaching
- Diversity curriculum in third year of medical curriculum
In 2018, Aarti chose to undertake an NIHR In-Practice Fellowship award at Hull York Medical School under Professor Joanne Reeve’s supervision, to research how and why planned medical education strategies may or may not support the development of learner’s person-centredness. This research was completed in July 2021 and has been published open access in the prestigious Medical Education journal and selected by Medical Education journals chief editor Kevin Ewa for a podcast. This research has received the Royal College of General Practitioner Research Paper of the Year award 2022 (medical education) and was selected as a ‘Must Read’ article by the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
To increase the accessibility of the research findings, Aarti used a small grant from the Clare Wand Foundation to produce an infographic of the research findings. This research was also selected by Medical Education journals chief editor Kevin Ewa for a podcast.
In the last few years, Aarti has been leading efforts to support primary care to move towards more environmentally sustainable healthcare through her work with Greener Practice. Aarti sees the move towards lower carbon healthcare as aligned to holistic healthcare and person-centred practice. The principles of sustainable clinical healthcare include a focus on preventing ill health and health inequalities, patient empowerment and improving patient pathways.
View Aarti’s publications on ORCHID.