Information for trainees
Hospital placements
In your first two years of training (ST1 and ST2) you’ll complete two six-month specialty placements at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Each hospital placement is designed to help you build transferable knowledge and skills that are relevant to general practice.
Example posts from August 2021 include:
Post | August 2021 | February 2022 | August 2022 | February 2023 |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Stroke medicine | GP ITP | Paediatrics | General practice |
2 | General practice | Stroke Medicine | GP ITP | Old age psychiatry (Ealing Hospital) |
3 | Paediatrics | General Practice | Stroke medicine | GP ITP |
4 | GP ITP | Paediatrics | General pratice | Stroke medicine |
5 | Obstetrics and gynaecology | GP ITP | Public health | General practice |
6 | General practice | Obstetrics and gynaecology | GP ITP | Paediatrics |
7 | Stroke medicine | General practice | Obstetrics and gynaecology | GP ITP |
8 | GP ITP | Stroke medicine | General practice | Obstetrics and gynaecology |
9 | Geriatric medicine | GP ITP | Obstetrics and gynaecology | General practice |
10 | General practice | Old age psychiatry (Ealing Hospital) | GP ITP | Paediatrics |
11 | Emergency medicine | General practice | Psychiatry - General adult (West Middlesex Hospital) | GP ITP |
12 | GP ITP | Psychiatry - General adult (West Middlesex Hospital) | General practice | Public health |
13 | Geriatric medicine (Rehab) | GP ITP | Paediatrics | General practice |
GP/Innovative Training Posts (ITP)
Each of our trainees undertake three GP attachments:
- A 12-month ST3 attachment
- A 6-month ST1/ST2 attachment
- A 6-month ST1/ST2 GP ITP post
Our ITP post represent a unique opportunity to broaden your horizons in posts that are relevant and interesting.
The weekly timetable for each of these ITP posts are:
- 6 sessions in practice (5 clinical, 1 tutorial)
- 1 session half-day teaching
- 3 sessions in ITP specialty (4 sessions during breaks in term time)
Outlined below is a brief digested description of each post:
Innovative Training Posts GP training Imperial College London
Kings Fund post - Health care policy
This post gives the trainee a unique opportunity to work with the Kings Fund. You will work with the team on one of the active projects evaluating and understanding current healthcare policy.
This could include looking at GP commissioning, service redesign, completion and choice etc.
There will also be the opportunity to attend prestigious events at the Kings Fund and to work with a dynamic team who have a direct impact on government policy.
This post would suit someone who is keen to understand the wider picture, engage with healthcare policy and has ambitions to shape the developing landscape. You will get to learn about research methodology and outcomes should include successful publication.
Learn more about their work at The Kings Fund.
Imperial College London - Academic Primary Care
This post is based in the Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London.
This department is a centre of excellence for Academic Primary care and Education. The trainee will have opportunities to get involved in Academic Primary Care, Undergraduate Teaching and Medical Writing. This would suit a trainee who would like to develop an interest in academic primary care and get some supported ‘hands-on’ experience of teaching. Outcomes should include successful publication.
Medical education fellow
The post is based at The South Kensington Campus of Imperial College London. The trainee will work on curriculum development, evaluation and teaching tool development and assessment (eg developing exam questions) as part of the team. This would suit a trainee who is interested in Undergraduate Education and further developing an interest in Medical Education.
Child health
The trainee in this post will spend six sessions in their GP practice and three sessions with a focus on Child Health. The focus for the Child Health work will include hands-on experience in Community Paediatrics and secondly project work looking at improving Child Health outcomes in your practice or local patch. Supervision for the Child Health component will be by the Paediatric Team at St Mary's Hospital.
Stand-alone GP
This is a standard 6 months post – working full time in General Practice with one of our attached GP practices.
Some trainees chose to use this six months to focus on core General Practice. As such the timetable is the same as a standard ST3 trainee:
- 8 sessions in GP (7 clinical, 1 tutorial)
- 1 session professional development
- 1 half-day session teaching
Please note if you are Less than Fulltime Training (LTFT) then current Deanery rules mean that you will be automatically placed in a stand-alone GP post.
Community diabetes
The trainee working in this post will be working alongside the Diabetic leads for the local patch, learning more about the clinical management of Diabetes and working to improve local outcomes in Diabetic Care. This post would suit a trainee who is keen to further their knowledge in Diabetes and is interested in how we improve and develop local services in Primary Care.
General Practice placement
In your third year (ST3) you’ll train within a hospital setting, an alternative primary care or community settings and a general practice setting. During the general practice placement you will focus on:
- Developing consultation skills
- Managing a range of primary care medical problems
- Completing the clinical skills assessment and work-based programme component of the MRCGP
Examples of services provided by GP training practices in and around our area include:
- Antenatal care
- Asthma clinic
- Baby clinic
- Child health surveillance
- Complementary therapy and palliative care
- Counselling
- Diabetic clinic
- Family planning
- Heart disease clinic
- Hypertension clinic
- Leg ulcer clinic
- Minor surgery
- Smoking cessation clinic
- Women's health