What is clinical academic training?

Clinical academic training schemes enable doctors to continue medical training programmes in a broad range of clinical specialties whilst simultaneously learning to carry out research alongside internationally renowned clinicians. The aim of clinical academic training is to provide clearly structured research and academic opportunities at various stages during clinical training. Doctors have a protected proportion of time to focus on research or educational projects and to develop research methodologies and other academic skills. A fundamental aim is to complete a PhD during this period (which will be a full-time period of research) and to subsequently progress as a senior clinician continuing research.

The majority of clinical academic training opportunities are funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through the Integrated Academic Training Pathway (IAT) for doctors and dentists in training. The NIHR IAT pathway supports academic clinical career opportunities at the Academic Clinical Fellow (ACF) and Clinical Lecturer (CL) levels. A number of additional Imperial-specific ACF and ACL opportunities may also be available and are funded locally by Imperial College each year. These will be structured along similar lines to the NIHR opportunities and will be subject to the ongoing availability of funding.

IAT Recruitment Timelines

Recruitment for National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) ACF posts are expected to open on 1st October 2022, starting in Aug/Sep/Oct 2023. CL posts are being recruited currently and ongoing. For information on Imperial posts, see the appropriate pages here, or look at the NIHR recruitment website .

All posts are advertised and recruited through Oriel.  An important new change is that for many medical specialty posts, recruitment will be at IMT 3 level (ie apply during IMT2, to start the ACF in IMT3, finishing IMT3 before "running through" into ST4 specialty posts. This will not apply to medical specialties not using IMT3 (eg GUM, Neurology, Haematology etc), which would still recruit at ST3.  Other universities recruit at IMT1.  Look carefully at Oriel and NIHR web sites.