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 2024 include:
| August 24 | Feb 25 | August 25 | Feb 26 | Aug 26 | |
| 1 | GP – Grand Union Health Centre | Elderly Med 6993 | ITP Kings Fund 30014 – Brook Green Medical Centre | Paeds 6761 | GP ST3 North End Medical Centre |
| 2 | Paeds 6771 | GP Bush Doctors | Psych W Mid 6767 | ITP Academic Primary Care 20135 – Millbank Surgery | GP ST3 Grand Union Health Centre |
| 3 | ITP Population Health + Health Inequalities -Grove Park Surgery | Psych Claybrook 6762 | GP – Grand Union Health Centre | Emergency Med 7143 | GP ST3 Parkview Practice |
| 4 | Stroke Med 6758 | ITP ITP Population Health + Health Inequalities – Park Medical Centre | Paeds 6761 | GP – Brook Green Medical Centre | GP ST3 Elizabeth Avenue |
| 5 | GP – North End Medical Centre | Psych Old Age Ealing 6768 | ITP Child Health 20125 – Parkview Practice | Stroke Med 6758 | GP ST3 Grand Union Health Centre |
| 6 | O+G 6769 | GP – Elizabeth Avenue Practice | Stroke Med 6758 | ITP Child Health 20125 – Grand Union Health Centre | GP ST3 North End Medical Centre |
| 7 | ITP Academic Primary Care 20144 – Cavendish Health | Stroke Med 6759 | GP – Redcliffe Surgery | O+G 6760 | GP ST3 Grand Union Health Centre |
| 8 | Psych Claybrook 6762 | ITP Academic Primary Care 20135 – Newton Medical | Elderly Rehab 7002 | GP – North End Medical Centre | GP ST3 Cavendish Health |
| 9 | GP – Queenswalk Practice | O+G 6769 | ITP Academic Primary Care 20144 – St Margarets Practice | Paeds 6763 | GP ST3 Parkview Practice |
| 10 | Elderly Rehab 7002 | GP – Grove Park Surgery | Paeds 6763 | ITP Med Ed 20145 – Parkview Practice | GP ST3 St Margarets Practice |
| 11 | ITP Kings Fund 30014 – Hammersmith Surgery | Paeds 6771 | GP – Bush Doctors | Psych W Mid 6767 | GP ST3 Millbank Surgery |
| 12 | Stroke Med 6759 | ITP Med Ed 20145 – Cavendish Health | O+G 6760 | GP – Bush Doctors | GP ST3 Chiswick Health Centre |
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 represents 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:
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.
Population Health / Health Inequality
The ITP component will be based in Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s strategy, research and innovation team working on a project linked to population health and health inequalities. Population health and health inequalities are growing priorities for the NHS and Imperial is leading the way in this agenda, working closely with NWL ICS and other local organisations to understand and impact the wider determinants of health for our patients, staff and local population. As part of a project team the trainee would contribute to a diverse range of outputs and gain experience across the population health and health inequalities portfolio.
Examples include:
● horizon scanning to understand best practice
● developing the evidence base through qualitative and quantitative research
● analysing and interpreting data and information gathered
● development of population health interventions and corresponding evaluation activities
● fostering relationships and building connections between local partner organisations
● writing up and presenting findings in different formats, including contributing to academic outputs and blogs
● influencing sector level policy.
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