The Chiltern VTS Day Release Programme

The programme is designed to complement the teaching and training received in practice.

We have an average of about 1 session per week on clinical topics, to broaden the medical base and sometimes develop specific skills, e.g. joint injection. We can never cover all topics, and if any Registrar has particular areas of clinical uncertainty or weakness they should discuss this with their Trainer to see if this can be remedied via tutorials in practice or attendance at hospital outpatients.

Almost as many sessions are devoted to presentations from other professionals working in fields linked with general practice, hopefully giving the Registrar insights into the multi-disciplinary approach of modern practice together with opportunities for multi-disciplinary learning and team working. These sessions are often perceived in advance by the Registrar as less interesting or useful than the 'safe' clinical topics but, in most cases, the feedback afterwards is very positive. Registrars often gain insight into their own attitudes towards the structure and function of teams and both the difficulties and advantages of working in a less hierarchical situation than hospital medicine.

One session weekly, excluding sub regional days, is resourced by the Course Organisers, helping the Registrar group to prepare for Summative Assessment and the MRCGP. We run regular video workshops, together with time to develop critical reading and critical appraisal skills, and there are sessions to review progress with audit projects but will also be encouraging reflective practice by looking at problem cases together. These are supplemented by outside resources from Public Health to provide grounding in epidemiology and evidence based practice, and by our librarian and her team who help develop IT and searching skills.

Skills development workshops on presentation techniques and time management are run, and a central pillar of our scheme is the counselling course, a three day residential programme to develop counselling skills for use in the consultation together with team building skills and personal development. We have recently introduced a further residential two day module at Cumberland Lodge towards the end of the training year, which has proved to be popular and valuable.

We hope that the day release will enhance the ability of the Registrar to arrange a continuing learning programme appropriate to their individual learning style. It should help their ability to work within a team and understand group dynamics and prioritise and select between conflicting healthcare demands and time requirements. Our aim is to encourage attitudes which are challenging and enquiring but remain open and explicit with both patients and colleagues. We hope to show different perspectives of the same issue, e.g. patient centred, practice centred and community centred.

Finally the Course Organisers are available both for support, career planning and problem solving!

Steven Cox & Jackie Maxmin

Return to Chiltern VTS summary or read about the Chiltern VTS in detail.