Specialised Foundation Programme

You will usually be based on the 3rd floor, Reynolds Building of the Charing Cross Campus.

Your week will be split between 3 days based with the undergraduate primary care education team and 2 days based in a local General Practice. Your academic work will be based at Imperial’s Charing Cross Hospital campus and all staff are expected to be on campus every Wednesday. There is some flexibility for remote working, however when teaching you are expected to be on campus, including where the teaching is online.

There is some flexibility with which days your academic part of the role can take place on. It is compulsory for one of your academic days to be a Wednesday as this is the day when most academics are on site and most departmental meetings/seminars take place.  The other days can be negotiated and will be dependant on the availability of your clinical supervisor at your allocated GP Practice.

Your three days in the department will comprise a combination of:

• working on teaching and/or research projects
• teaching medical students
• attending department activities (e.g. weekly seminars and dept meetings)
• attending training courses

Your academic supervisor from within Undergraduate Primary Care Education will contact you in advance of the start of your post to arrange a preliminary meeting. You will be provided with guidance about relevant department projects that you could get involved with.

It is worth thinking about your areas of interest a couple of months before you are due to join the department. Have a look at our departmental website including our MEdIC (Medical Education Innovation & Research Centre) pages to look at the departmental workstreams. There may also be the opportunity to work with some of the Public Health team who are also part of the department.

Under no circumstances can a project outside of the department (primary care/public health) be arranged. The terms of our agreement with the Foundation School and Imperial’s Clinical Academic Training Office (CATO) do not allow this.

You are attached to Undergraduate Primary Care Education so you should aim to do a research project within the team. You may also (following consultation with your academic supervisor) join or commence a project within Public Health with one of the departmental public health clinicians.

You will have several supervisors:

Overall academic F2 supervisor in the department: Dr Nina Dutta or Dr Sian Powell

Project/workstream supervisor: to be decided, depending on your area of work

Clinical Supervisor: your supervisor in your GP practice

There are many other opportunities for getting involved in teaching. Depending on your academic days, you will have the opportunity to teach on some of our undergraduate courses within the department. Prior to teaching on any course, we will always ask you to observe the session first. There will be an opportunity for your teaching to be observed such that you can receive personalised feedback on your teaching skills. Example of teaching that you may be involved in include:

Year 3 & Year 5 teaching

There is also the opportunity to teach on the Professional Values and Behaviours (PVB) sessions for early years medical students.

We have worked with Health Education England to agree a pool of two local training practices each year which will host our SFP trainees. These are accredited training practices with a fully trained clinical supervisor. These practices are close to the department and regularly host academic trainees:

• Crown Street Surgery
• Paddington Green Health Centre

 You will be allocated to one of these practices for your clinical placement. Imperial College HealthCare NHS Trust will inform you of your allocation.

Yes, you are encouraged to attend any relevant courses to your F2 academic training, within your study leave allowances, and with agreement from the department.

We run an in-house half day online generic teaching skills course called TACTIC. All trainees in the department are expected to attend this course.

How much leave am I allowed during the placement, and who do I contact about it?

You have a total of 9 days of annual leave per 4-month rotation and only under exceptional circumstances can leave be ‘carried over’ between rotations. You should aim to have a balanced split of leave on clinical and academic days.

Please ensure you arrange leave in advance and inform the department in order to avoid disappointment.

Yes. You are entitled to 10 days per year.  All study leave requests need to be approved by your educational supervisor and the team at the postgraduate centre.