Scottish Medical Training

Internal Medicine Training in Scotland is delivered on a regional basis in the North, South-East, East and West of Scotland. Each region has a different range of hospitals and training experiences from busy urban district general hospitals, large regional specialty centres, renowned teaching hospitals, to remote and rural sites, all of which provide valuable and unique clinical experiences.

Although your clinical training is regionally based, the training programme directors in Scotland work together to provide a teaching programme for all internal medicine trainees, along with an intensive simulation programme for each of the years of internal medicine. You will meet with other trainees from all over Scotland at bootcamp in year 1 at the national simulation centre in Larbert, and also at our face to face events for quality improvement and national trainee conferences. The regular clinical teaching programme is delivered online with monthly afternoon sessions which are recorded and you will have access to the whole teaching programme which is designed on a three year rolling programme to cover the IMT syllabus. There are also national palliative medicine teaching sessions in addition to your attachment to palliative medicine teams during your clinical training.

Your study leave budget is supplemented in Scotland with additional separate funding for clinical simulation so this does not impact on your personal study leave choices. The simulation programme is highly valued by trainees and has been described as the best clinical teaching ever experienced by previous trainees. There is a three-day bootcamp in year 1, a clinical skills day in year 2 and a two-day registrar ready course in year 3. The clinical teaching programme is delivered over and above this budget with expert speakers from all over Scotland and trainee feedback of these sessions is excellent.

Although CoVID has impacted clinical training in all areas, we are working hard to make sure that your training experience is excellent and supportive. Scotland is an amazing place to work and we hope to have you join us.

The West Consortium now consists of posts within the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) Glasgow and the West of Scotland Beatson Oncology Centre. The QEUH opened in 2015 and comprises the largest hospital campus in the UK. It benefits from on-site regional centres such as neurology, neurosurgery and vascular surgery and is the location of one of the national trauma units. Even within medical specialties it hosts highly specialised, tertiary level care for conditions such as pulmonary hypertension, congenital heart disease, cystic fibrosis and others. Posts within rotations include the majority of medical specialties: acute medicine, infectious disease, cardiology, medicine for the elderly, diabetes & endocrinology, gastroenterology, haematology, infectious diseases, nephrology, oncology, respiratory, rheumatology and stroke medicine. There are also a number of clinical academics based within these departments which will provide an opportunity to discover the important role of academia and clinical medicine. 

All IMT trainees in the West of Scotland have access to the national training programme. This is predominantly online but with some face to face meetings too in order to allow networking and meeting trainees and trainers from other regions. This is a 3 year rolling educational programme that covers the majority of clinical objectives as well as non-clinical CPD such as careers advice, teaching and management skills. Importantly, trainees are now involved in the design of some of this programme and can shape its content to be as relevant and useful as possible. In addition, there is an annual national QI conference which allows trainees to present and showcase QI work done over the preceding year. There is also a highly regarded simulation ‘immersive’ bootcamp experience in years 1 and 3 which help equip trainees with practical and procedural skills to enhance training.  

Applicants to Internal Medical Training are offered the opportunity to preference GATE posts.  The GATE programme (Glasgow Academic Training Environment) aims to foster academic development & training beyond academic FY, through internal medical training and across a broad range of specialties, to prepare trainees for subsequent application to competitive local and national research training programmes (e.g. MRC, Wellcome Trust, BHF, etc).  GATE provides continuous academic mentorship to facilitate attainment of academic objectives that are additional to the requisite competencies required of trainees.

GATE is intended to act as a bridge between an academic foundation programme and a Clinical Lecturer post.  However, applicants preferencing the GATE posts are not required to have completed an academic foundation programme.