Meet the North West Hospital and Community Care Team

Can you explain what the purpose of your team is? 

The Hospital and Community Care team manages specialty schools for a variety of specialties including surgery and pathology. We support over 4000 postgraduate doctors in training (trainees) in core and higher training on the pathway to becoming a consultant. Supporting heads of school, training programme directors, educators, and external stakeholders to train the future medical workforce, so the postgraduate doctors receive high quality training in hospital and community care settings. We see support as the key word in our job roles.  

What are your priority areas of work? 

Our priorities are as follows: 

• Recruitment of new starters to maximise the training programme. We need to fill our posts to ensure that we produce as many doctors as possible who are eligible to take up consultant posts. We don’t want to leave host sites with gaps but need to factor in postgraduate doctors who may be returning from periods out of training, so it’s a balancing act. 

• Completion of annual assessments. Our summer months are our busiest time, from 1 May 2021 to 30 April 2022 we completed 5199 Annual Review of Competency Progression (ARCPs). 

• Co-ordination of training placements in sites across the north west 

• Expansion of the training programme placements in line with national priorities, e.g., Radiology expansion 

• Communication with stakeholders including postgraduate doctors in training, educators, host trusts, the General Medial Council, the Royal Colleges, and our lead employer, St Helens & Knowsley Teaching Hospital NHS Trust.  

• Education and training events, such as school away days, both online and face to face

• Following Royal College guidance and advising on the impact on postgraduate doctors training pathways, e.g., taking time out for research 

• Adhering to General Medical Council regulations 

• Following the Gold Guide which sets out the arrangements for specialty training    

How do you work across the north west region? 

We support training programmes across the north west. Our training posts range from those in large central teaching hospitals like Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LUFT), to further flung sites such as Barrow and the Isle of Man. 

What are your achievements over the past 12 months?  

We are extremely proud of our team, and the way we have adapted through COVID and continued to streamline our work. We have also survived through thousands of online assessments! 

This year we have rolled out the north west expansion and redistribution of training posts to help with health inequalities and a new curriculum with changes to portfolios supporting post graduate doctors and educators.  

We have continued to support our stakeholders, supporting schools and staff resuming face to face activities. We did this work, whilst maintaining and prioritising the health and wellbeing of our staff.  

The last 12 months have been very challenging for our team, and we have moved from strength to strength.  

What can you help with? 

We can help with any specialty programme support and all its complexities. This includes everything to do with a postgraduate doctor’s time in the training programme. 

What is the best way to contact the team?  

You can find out about our Specialty Schools here.  

We have two large teams based in the Regatta and Manchester PP3 offices.  

We are contactable by telephone, email, and MS Teams, find the full list of contacts here.