GPST

St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust is a large London teaching hospital, providing an established and popular GPSTs scheme with an excellent educational reputation. The course runs on Thursday afternoons at the Post Graduate Education Centre at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, southwest London.

These pages are primarily targeted at those currently enrolled on the St George’s Healthcare GPSTs, providing information on the course programme of activities, contact details for key personnel, and links to useful resources and documents. For those interested in joining a GPSTs scheme, note that applications are not made directly to the scheme. Please see www.gprecruitment.org.uk where there is a full description of the application process. The St George’s Healthcare GPSTs programme is overseen by the London Deanery.

The scheme aims to:

  • Make the course both enjoyable and educationally valuable by using adult learning principles
  • Expose trainees to key areas of learning
  • Encourage trainees to become aware of important issues in general practice such as professionalism and managing uncertainty
  • Encourage trainees to take away key learning points and to reflect upon them
  • Provide a comfortable, safe educational environment in which trainees feel able to express and share their views and opinions. This may be in either a large group teaching or small group discussion
  • Enable trainees to balance the needs of the individual with those of society
  • Expose trainees to a variety of opinions and views from their peers and ourselves so that they are aware of alternative viewpoints
  • Promote a sound understanding of good communication and consulting skills and to develop these personally is one of the schemes core functions
  • Equip trainees with the knowledge and skills to pass the Royal College of General Practitioners membership exams (MRCGP)
  • Encourage life-long learning

The three year scheme begins in August each year. The first two years include six months in general practice (GP) or in an Innovative Training Post (ITP); and three six-month hospital specialties. These two years are followed by a year in general practice.

The hospital jobs are arranged into balanced speciality rotations relevant to general practice. These include:

  • Accident and emergency, paediatrics
  • Care of the elderly
  • Psychiatry
  • Ear, nose and throat
  • Genito-urinary medicine (GUM)
  • Dermatology
  • General medicine/ endocrinology
  • Acute medicine
  • Cardiology

All trainees in the general practice year of their course attend a half day release on Thursday afternoons, which trainees in hospital jobs may also attend depending on the particular speciality.