There is a rich variety of styles to posts involved in general practice specialty training.  General practice is a very ‘wide-field’ specialty.  It is thus impossible to deliver every single possible aspect of the work of a general practitioner into every training programme.  Programmes are designed as best as possible to give a spread of experience across secondary care specialties and may incorporate public health and community paediatrics.  Some programmes even include an educational post within their rotations.  No two trainees will receive identical experience. 

The programmes are designed to give trainees the skills to work as general practitioners.  These skills include the ability to deal with uncertainty.

Secondary care

Most trainees will have one or more posts based in secondary care with a mix of acute emergencies, in patient and out-patient care.

Primary Care Trust Posts

Many PCTs are undertaking an increasing role in delivering out patient based services for specialties and some training posts may be partially or entirely based here.  Many PCTs have a long history of delivering public health and community paediatrics and many posts will thereby fall under the PCTs.

Innovative Training Posts

These are posts which are based in a general practice, usually six months.  During these posts there will be attachments to one or more specialties for a variable length of time.  These attachments will almost be entirely out-patient based and are designed to give the trainee high level out-patient skills for that specialty.

The Training Programme

All trainees will be undertaking a minimum of twelve months in a training practice for the final twelve months of their training programme.  The composition of the programme depends on the length of training and the duration of posts.  The majority of programmes are three years and split 18 months Secondary Care and 18 months General Practice.  Other three year programmes where the post duration is four months the split is usually 16 months Secondary Care and 20 months General Practice.  During your programme you may find that your time spent in General Practice is split between two practices.  The four year programmes are usually split as above but with an additional twelve months added after the final twelve months in General Practice at a different practice. 

There is currently a maximum of twenty months in a three programme and twenty four months in a four year programme which can be spent within primary care during the training programme.