Training Practice

Whaddon Healthcare is an accredited training practice through the Thames Valley School of General Practice Oxford Deanery, and has been a hub of primary care training in Milton Keynes.

We are involved in junior doctor, nurse and pharmacist training programmes. We aim to ensure that our junior doctors become competent, effective and confident GPs of tomorrow.

We are proud of the good reputation we have built as far as teaching and training is concerned. The practice has been training for more than 20 years, and a considerable number of doctors now practicing locally have in fact spent a period of training with the practice.

We have doctors at many stages of their post graduate training, most of them training to become GPs, with a small number doing part of their hospital based training with an intention to specialise in the hospital speciality. The majority of our registrars are in their final year after training for some 9 years, and their next post is as a fully registered doctor.

The benefits to having training doctors for our patients is that they bring with them experiences and training in the most up to date methods and ideas, which helps to keep our experienced doctors equally up to date.

All of our doctors are closely supervised and have access to further advice. There is a close supervision and assessment process of the doctors training, and part of this may involve demonstrating their skills at consulting, which involves videoing a number of consultations.

There may be occasions when a patient presents with an interesting condition that provides an educational opportunity. This is very useful to demonstrate to some of the other doctors and medical students who may be attached to the practice.

We may also have nursing, pharmacist or medical students. If a student is observing during your consultation, your permission will be asked for at the time of booking your appointment. If you do not wish a student to be present this will not affect your treatment.

Any doctors who are training at the practice will work under the supervision of one of our GPs, and will endeavour to work to the same high standards as the rest of our team.

The types of training doctors that you might encounter include:

Foundation Year 2 (FY2) Doctor

These are doctors who have already completed a minimum of 1 year of work in hospital as a qualified doctor under close supervision. During this time, they will have had to satisfy their supervisor of their competence to progress further in their career.

They are close to deciding which path to take in their career, and work with the practice to experience general practice before making this decision. They stay with us for 4 months, and they are usually allocated 20 minute consultations. They will be closely supervised by a GP until they have demonstrated their competence.

Registrars

These are doctors who have completed a minimum of 2 years work as a doctor, and have chosen to train as GPs.

The training programme is 3 years long, and you may therefore see registrars in their 1st (ST1), 2nd (ST2), 3rd (ST3) year of training. They stay with us for between 6 months and 1 year, and they are allocated between 10 and 20 minutes to consult with patients. They will initially be closely supervised by a GP until they have demonstrated their competence.

Before they qualify as GPs, they have to undertake further examinations, and demonstrate that they are able to practice independently at the required standard.

As a part of their training in primary care, registrars are required to video some consultations. We will ask your permission and consent before any video consultation. You have the right to withdraw consent at any stage, and this will not affect the quality of care you receive.

Many of our patients and our team miss our trainees when they have competed their training, and the time comes for them to move to a new placement. We are lucky that many of our trainees choose to come back to join our team as permanent staff.