Teaching Involvement

 

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Eaton Socon practice is a training practice. This means that hospital doctors who wish to do further training to become GPs, work sessions with the practice to gain the experience they need to become family doctors.

In a training practice, your medical records may be used for educational purposes, and a team of inspectors may view your records to ensure that they are maintained up to the standard for a training purposes.

In addition, during the training period, video surgeries are conducted for assessment of consultation skills. Occasionally, you may be asked whether you consent to your consultation being recorded. This is entirely voluntary, and you will have an opportunity at the end of the consultation to withdraw consent if you wish.

The practice also trains medical students, and you may be asked whether you consent to a medical student being present during your consultation. Again, this is entirely voluntary, please inform a receptionist if you do not wish to participate in training surgeries.

 

GP Registrars

GP Registrars work as part of the team. GP Registrars are fully qualified doctors with at least 2 years experience of working in hospitals and who wish to specialise in general practice. GP Registrars have daily surgeries (often with longer appointment times), undertake home visits and help with on-call doctor duties. Their placements with us vary in length, depending on their stage of training, from 4 months to over 12 months. They are supervised and assessed on a regular basis. Patients may, on occasion, be asked whether they mind having their consultation videoed for assessment purposes and/or to complete patient satisfaction questionnaires.

 

Foundation Doctors

Foundation Doctors are fully qualified doctors who are rotating around various specialities to increase their experience. Some of them may choose to go on to do further training to become a GP. Each Foundation Doctor will be with us for a 4 month placement. They will be closely supervised and assessed throughout their time with us. They will have longer appointment times.

 

Medical Students    

The surgery provides placements for medical students who are training to become doctors. Patients may be made aware of students sitting in with GPs, observing a surgery or may sometimes be asked if they mind being interviewed by a student as part of their training.

Patients do, of course, have the right to decline in helping with assessment & training. However, we hope that most will feel happy to assist in the education and training of our future health professionals.

 

Department of Health Connecting Programme

To understand the needs of patients and the pressures NHS staff face, every Department of Health civil servant will be expected to gain first hand experience of life in health or social care for at least 1 month every year.

A key recommendation in the Francis report was changing the culture of the department to make sure the needs of patients are always the first priority. As an important step, the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced in 2013 that he wants his staff to lead the way across Government, by gaining a personal understanding of life on the front line and using that experience to shape policies that serve patients and their families. The surgery supports this programme by participating and placements are overseen by our Practice Manager. Please visit the Department of Health website for more details