What to Expect

You have the nuts and bolts of expectations in your educational agreement, and it can be quite dry reading, and perhaps the enthusiasm we have for the job can’t come across completely in text format. Hopefully you can get the flavour here of what will be a worthwhile and challenging post in your progress towards completing training in General Practice.

Whether in ST2 or ST3, your training should be enhanced by being in general practice, and hopefully while you train and carry out the necessary aspects of the workplace based assessment you will also learn how it feels to be a GP, and acquire the skills that will equip you for your career as an efficient independent GP. Sounds simple doesn’t it?

At times it should feel like you are working extremely hard, and hopefully the balance should be right that you will gain lots of confidence at managing patients in primary care, time management and organisational skills, use of time as a diagnostic tool and tolerance of uncertainty in medicine.

You should notice a difference in the relationship you have with your clinical/educational supervisor when you’re in a primary care placement. We take an active interest in your development and we will work together in surgeries and outside surgeries to tailor training to your needs while meeting the tasks of COTs, CbDs and your learning log entries on the eportfolio. We’re interested in you!

We will aim to give you constructive and useful feedback as to your progress and development. It will be your professional responsibility to keep up with these assessments and reflections while planning your preparations for the AKT, SCA and your Out-Of-Hours commitments. Nobody else can do this, indeed it wouldn’t equip you for independent practice if we did it all for you, but the pay-off is the skills you learn in the busy time in general practice will be ones you can use after qualification for appraisal, revalidation and relicensing! In addition they will also help you survive a demanding but incredibly rewarding occupation.

Tutorials

You will be carrying out apprentice-style learning while seeing and reflecting on your own patients, and we will give you experience in the challenges of telephone consulting and home visiting. In addition to this and your COTs and CbDs we can also arrange tutorials on topics where you can lead the agenda- you decide what aspect of clinical or non-clinical practice you would like help with and we can decide based on your level of experience in the topic how best to meet your learning needs.

Feedback

Reflecting doesn’t stop when you qualify! We also reflect on our practice and how we provide training, and a really useful way to reflect on the quality of our training is to get an idea of your experience. Like your learning log entries the feedback you provide is best in a SMART way.

During your time with us it’s likely that we’ll be asking for your feedback on us as colleagues (in our version of the MSF) and certainly as trainers we need your input to ensure standards of training are as high as possible.

Escalating Concerns

If you are having any problems we would hope that you would be able to raise them through a supportive relationship with your Trainer, Dr Hynes, or your Educational Supervisor if this isn’t Jamie. If the issues are with regards to training we would welcome discussions on how we can help you get the most out of your time with us.

Sometimes there may even be issues with your trainer, (we’ve not had any before but it has happened at other practices), or things cannot be resolved and we would then need the assistance of the Training Programme Directors for Dudley, all working GPs, (Drs Zia Noor, Waris Ahmed, Manny Samra, Cath Miller).

Beyond the Dudley VTS is your Area Director, Dr James Bullock (former Dudley VTS TPD), a working GP in Dudley who oversees all of the VT Schemes in the Black Country.

If the concern is still not dealt with, it may need to be taken to the Head of School of General Practice, Dr David Palmer, a working GP in Staffordshire. Further escalation can go to Health Education West Midlands, to the Director for Postgraduate Education, Dr Fiona Sellens, a working GP in Herefordshire, or the Dean, Dr Russell Smith.

Please click on one of the images to start the slideshow with captions. You may be tested later!