NTS: You Said, We Did

After six weeks of gathering opinions from students and trainees about their time working and training in practice placements and training posts, we are delighted to announce the south west has had another excellent year with a regional response rate of 70% by doctors in training, a 10% increase from last year. 

Every survey response, across every profession and location, counts and helps to improve the experience of current and future students and trainees.

The results from the National Training Survey (NTS) are critical to understanding the quality of training and are used throughout the year to guide future work.

The summary highlights are:

• The results showed that doctors in training rated the south west as the first region in England for overall satisfaction with the quality of training. 
• The south west ranked first in the country for 12 other domains: clinical supervision, clinical supervision out of hours, reporting systems, teamwork, supportive environment, induction, adequate experience, education governance, educational supervision, feedback, local teaching, and facilities. 

Nevertheless, our quality team are now actively working on areas to improve training to ensure the south west delivers outstanding training for all. 

The south west ranked third for regional teaching, fifth for rota design, and sixth for study leave, making these our targets for further analysis this year. 

To facilitate this, the quality team has met with all our providers to go through the results in detail; to celebrate achievements, and identify and plan areas to work with them to improve.  

What you told us

Trainees raised concerns via the Quality Panel and the NTS around the general medical care of psychiatry patients.

What we did/are doing

Gloucester Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust utilised the expertise of a physical health specialist nurse who reviews the GP records and general health and well-being of all the patients admitted in significant detail. This good practice has resulted in better feedback, especially seen in core psychiatry training (CPT) and is now promoted to other trusts with similar problems.

What you told us

Acute medicine trainees shared concerns via the Quality Panel that the new curriculum requirements for point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) competence would be challenging in our region.

What we did/are doing

We have appointed three POCUS training programme directors (TPDs), who started in post-April 2022, to lead POCUS training and governance and to build a network of POCUS clinicians and supervisors. The first regional focussed acute medicine ultrasound (FAMUS) training course for point-of-care ultrasound was arranged by our new POCUS TPDs and held in April 2022. We have allocated funds to support further FAMUS courses in the region each year.

Thank you to everyone who completed the National Training and Education Survey this year. There is still time to complete the survey as it will close at 23.59 Wednesday, 30 November.