Improving Your Training!

Here in the North of Scotland we are always trying to improve your experience as GP speciality trainees. We run regular Trainee Forums three times a year.  These forums are open to all to attend and are your opportunity to give us feedback on your training experience both in the hospital and general practice components of your training.  The forums are valued by our existing trainees and are well attended.  We also use them to develop new training initiatives in partnership with yourselves.

Recent topics of discussion that have resulted in specific changes in the last few months have included:-

• Improving support for less than full time trainees by running specific sessions focussing on the needs of LTFT trainees,
• Improving the flexibility and quality of out of hours sessions in Grampian, focussing the sessions on the centres and times that provide the best educational experiences.
• Development of a secure internet forum to allow trainees to swap out of hours sessions

As well as these forums that occur three times annually both in the Grampian and Caledonian programs you also have the opportunity to discuss any issues you may have via our secure online discussion forums that run in Moodle , the virtual learning environment that we use to support your training here in the North of Scotland.

Here is some feedback we received from one of our current trainees.  Laura is an ST3 who is the Associate in Training (AiT) representative for the North of Scotland and as such attends the AiT representatives meeting at the RCGP. Here is what she emailed to us after the most recent meeting.

"I also wanted to report back that from the meeting I had at the college last week in London, as a deanery we are really well treated up here in the North. Compared to some of the stories I heard where communication and disseminating information out was really poor, I was proud to report back on things like moodle and our forums. Whilst we can always improve and iron out things like the LTFT provision etc it genuinely felt great to be able to sit and tell others how we do things- even though we live in the cold North and so far from London!

So, thank you to all the team.

Laura"