The Foundation Programme in General Practice

Details

The Mersey Deanery has produced this guide for General Practitioners who are interested in the Foundation Programme Training in General Practice. It is relevant to those colleagues who wish to take Foundation doctors into their practice from August 2006. Every practice is different and will offer different learning opportunities for their Foundation doctor. This guide is not intended to be either definitive or prescriptive but a framework that you can build on and adapt to suit your circumstances.

The content of the guide draws from a combination of the Foundation Programme, which has been delivered nationally since 2006.

• Guidance produced by Mersey based Foundation Groups
• National guidelines and directives

The 2 years of Foundation training consists of:

• Foundation year one (F1) – equivalent to current pre-registration house officer (PRHO)
• Foundation year two (F2) – equivalent to first year senior house officer year (SHO1)

General practice colleagues will have F2 doctors for 4 months as part of a triplet.

Many of you are already experienced teachers of GP Registrars or Medical Students, for others this is an opportunity for involvement in medical teaching. We hope that everyone will find the guide helpful.

For the purpose of this guide the term ‘trainer’ refers to the person nominated by the practice (and agreed by the deanery) to have overall educational responsibility for the Foundation Programme Doctor whilst in the nominated practice. This will involve clinical supervision of the trainee whilst on their general practice triplet. The 'trainer' will also act as the Educational Supervisor during the four month General Practice attachment.

Background to MMC

In August 2002, the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, published ‘Unfinished Business’ which described the two year foundation programme. This effectively replaces the PRHO year and the first SHO year. Please click here for link to this report on the DOH website - this will open as a PDF document.

In April 2004 the MMC Strategy Group published ‘Modernising Medical Careers – The Next Steps’. This outlined the programme structure, content and context. It emphasised the diagnosis and management of the acutely ill patient as a key aim of the programme, not simply in acute hospitals, but also in mental health and general practice settings. (Please click here for link to this report on the DOH website) - this will open as a PDF document.

In August 2004 Mersey Deanery set up Foundation Programme pilots for Foundation Year 2. This involved 247 doctors across the Mersey Deanery.

In March 2005 the Department of Health announced that from August 2006 there would be funding made available for 55% of all doctors on the Foundation Programme to undertake part of their training in General Practice. (This will be increased to 80% from August 2007). This effectively means that from August 2006 F2 doctors will participate in a 4 month rotation through general practice.

The Foundation Programme is an outcome-based educational process with defined competencies to be achieved and a process of assessment with validated assessment tools.