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Western General Hospital - General Surgery (2024)

Individual placement description
Placement:

General Surgery
Year:

F2
Region:

South East
Hospital(s):

Western General Hospital, Edinburgh
Main duties of placement:

You are largely in ARU seeing and assessing emergency surgical admissions.

This can get pretty busy as there are usually 8-15 admissions daily and you are the only person admitting surgical patients.

On days when you are not on call you can help F1s with ward jobs, spend time in theatre, or assist the person admitting new patients.
Typical work pattern:

Varies; for an 'on call' (admissions) shift it is 8-8.30, you work 2-3 blocks of 7 days of this per rotation.

Nights are 8-8.30, usually 2-3 sets of week-nights (Mon-Thurs) and 2-3 sets of weekend nights (Fri-Sun) per rotation.

Other days are 9-6pm (assisting on call person) and 8-4.30 ('standard day').

Standard days are more relaxed; you are effectively supernumerary and it is a chance to be in theatre, catch up on dictation etc. This is when you can also take any annual or study leave.

(If there is no assist to the on call though you will likely be called to ARU to assist the first on call).
Learning opportunities:

Various departmental meetings through the week - you can usually get to the 8am ones but harder at lunchtime.

If you are a budding surgeon there is plenty of opportunity to be in theatre and develop your surgical skills.
Teaching:

FY2 teaching 1 hour per week. 

No other formal teaching set up in the department but quite a lot of opportunities for you to teach others - lots of medical students, both 3rd year and 5th year, are attached to this department
Unique selling points:

If you want to do surgery then this is a good job - there is lots of opportunity for theatre time and admitting patients is a good way to learn about presentations of common surgical admissions.

Quite a friendly job as a large junior team in this department.
It is important to note that this description is a typical example of your placement and may be subject to change.

This page was last updated on: 13.03.2025 at 16.36

Post Descriptors for F2

South-East region post descriptors for F2.