Northumbria VTS at Well Close Square

North Northumberland Trainers Group
Minutes of the meeting of the North Northumberland Trainers Group held on 16/4/97 at Simms, Alnwick.

Bill presented information on the Royal College of Physicians core curriculum and the Tynedale questionnaire, and outlined the developments in postgraduate training for hospital doctors, based on models defined from long experience of general practice teaching. The similarity between the Royal College of Physicians core curriculum and the GP training curriculum was noted.

The following developments were discussed:

Training of hospital consultants at Hexham: This has included communication skills, clinical epidemiology and breaking bad news.
Consultants' attitudes to education in local hospitals.
Medical SHO rotation: there have been some defections from this rotation (which includes four months GP work) from hospital medicine to general practice.
Sunderland initiative: organised by Brian Toms.
House officer visits to practice: it has proved difficult to arrange protected time for these sessions because of the HO's service commitment. There has been one cancellation because of this.
HO elective periods: apparently, up to 4 weeks elective period is allowed during the HO year, and this could be spent in general practice. Gordon Cameron reported that his experience of this was that the educational process was hampered by the HO's service commitment again: the HO was regularly being called back to the hospital.
Evidence based medicine: Gary Fraser discussed the formation of an EBM group.

Brad Cheek 1997