More time in General Practice
We strongly believe that the place to learn about General Practice is in General Practice. That is why we are very pleased to have been the first General Practice Training Scheme in the Eastern Region to be able to offer a 3 year training programme, 18 months of which is spent in general practice rather than the usual 12 months. This has been happening for several years now and we are very pleased to be able to continue to offer this opportunity. The other half of the scheme is spent in four different hospital posts in the West Suffolk Hospital.
We have redeveloped the scheme from August 2007 in line with the MMC changes. We will now take 12 registrars a year, starting every August. In the first year of the scheme, 6 registrars will start with a general practice placement whilst the other 6 registrars will do a 6 month post in either Palliative Medicine, A&E or Paediatrics. These 2 groups will then swap over, with those starting with a hospital post going into general practice and vice versa.
During the second year, all 12 registrars will do 3 hospital posts, all of 4 months duration. The posts involved will be a selection of Medicine, O&G, Paediatrics, Ophthalmology, ENT and psychiatry, Psycho-Geriatrics & Oncology.
The final year will be spent back in general practice again, this time at a different practice. We try to arrange for you to spend time in a town as well as a country practice so that you can experience both working environments.
The ST2 year hospital posts are in fixed rotations but we do ask you for your preferences and try to acommodate those as much as we can. We will also attempt to be flexible about your preferred first year hospital post as well as which practices you are placed in, taking into account where you will be living etc. Usually this works out okay with most trainees getting their 1st or 2nd choices.
We are very fortunate to have this website as our online learning community. You are able to see the visitor section of the website which we hope you will find helpful. Members of the scheme have a unique log-in password and are able to access the other areas of the website. We use this for sharing information, storing presentations, disseminating on call rotas etc. We are always looking for ideas to develop this further.
if you are going to work with children you are required to disclose any record of convictions, bind-over orders or cautions against you as an appendix to your application.