King’s Mill doctors ‘well trained’

The Local Education Training Board data shows that only two per cent of junior doctors working at Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are given the lowest assessment score at the end of their training year - compared to up to 70 per cent at some other trusts.

All newly-qualified doctors have to achieve various competencies by the end of their foundation programme before they can apply for further training in the area they want to specialise in.

Evidence is assessed at the end of the training year and the doctors are scored from level 1 (the highest) to level 5.

Trainees achieving outcome 5 have 10 days to gather missing evidence of their competencies or will have to repeat the training year at a different hospital trust.

At two per cent, Sherwood Forest reported the lowest rate of initial outcome 5 for the whole of the East Midlands.

Dr Owain Thompson, foundation programme director, and Eduardo Villatoro, foundation year 1 tutor at the trust, agree that the success in this assessment - known as the Accreditation for Review of Career Progression (ARCP) - is due mainly to close monitoring of the junior doctors’ progress throughout the year by well-qualified and highly experienced educational supervisors at consultant level.

This is further strengthened by the ‘End of Placement’ interviews that Dr Thompson and Mr Villatoro hold at the end of each post throughout the year - an initiative that is unique to Sherwood Forest Hospitals.

Mr Villatoro said: “We are very proud of the standards achieved by our trainee doctors and the fact that they are among the best prepared in the region.

“They all benefit from the knowledge of our excellent educational supervisors, who deliver in-depth training and ensure they are exposed to a wide variety of clinical areas.”

Sherwood Forest Hospitals currently has 74 foundation year trainees.

They all have to achieve competencies in patient safety, good record keeping, communications and consent, together with a wide range of practical skills.

As a quality control measure, the LETB also scrutinised a 10 per ceny sample from every trust’s ARCP outcome and they agreed with 100 per cent of the assessments undertaken at Sherwood Forest Hospitals.