All applications for Worcester VTS are made through the West Midlands Region. At the time of application you should state that you want to come on the South Worcestershire scheme. We advise you to put Worcester VTS as your first preference. In the West Midlands, we recruit to the VTS once a year to commence in August.
The available posts are advertised in the BMJ, and on The National Recruitment Website:
www.gprecruitment.org.uk
We are not able to offer shortened schemes. The scheme rotations will consist of the first 2 years – six posts of four months each, followed by a year in general practice. The NHS is a constantly changing structure and we are always trying to improve the scheme. This means that posts may change during the course of your stay with us.
Other Enquiries
For all other enquiries regarding recruitment to GP VTS Scheme in the West Midlands please contact:
NHS West Midlands Workforce Deanery
St Chads Court,
213 Hagley Road,
Edgbaston,
Birmingham,
B16 9RG
Telephone: 0121 695 2599
Making a Good Application
Through your letter of application we are interested in your reasons for choosing General Practice as a career and the experiences that have led you to make your choice.
Think about your experience to date: What skills have you learned that can be used in General Practice? For example, it may be that your experience talking to relatives has helped you develop communication skills, you may be working in a team and become aware of inter-professional issues. All these can be more impressive than telling us you have done so many lumbar punctures or have done open-heart surgery or held a retractor at a brain transplant.
The good candidate will have already begun to think of what qualities a good General Practitioner should have and will also have ideas on what they are looking for in a Vocational Training Scheme.
Before joining the course we suggest that you speak to one of the Doctors on the VTS scheme. Contact SHOs via Worcester Royal Infirmary switchboard and GP Registrars via the practices.
Worcester VTS is totally committed to equal opportunities. Candidates who feel their circumstances may place them at a disadvantage are welcome to discuss their application with a course organiser.
Informal Enquiries
Informal enquiries about Worcester VTS can be made at any time in writing - post or email or by appointment - made through the Postgraduate Centre
Notice - Please do not ring the Course Organisers at their Practices
The Speciality of General Practice
We believe that General Practice is a Speciality. It appears rather contradictory to say that a generalist is a specialist, but we believe that the special skills that a GP must develop constitute a discipline equal (or superior) to other medical specialities.
The following is from a BMJ leader on the topic:
Over the past 50 years general practice has established itself not only as an academic discipline with its own curriculum, research base, and peer reviewed journals but also as the cornerstone of most national healthcare systems in Europe.
In so doing, general practitioners have shown that the intellectual framework within which they operate is different from, but no less demanding than that of specialists.
General practitioners must achieve a working diagnostic and therapeutic knowledge across the reach of biomedical science and must be able to forge effective and continuing relationships with an enormous range of individual patients.
They need to understand the processes by which illness is socially constructed within the patient's life, and they must mediate between the patient's subjective experience of illness and the scientific explanation.
The breadth and comprehensiveness of its endeavour has made general practice notoriously difficult to define.
Olesen et al attempted a new definition that emphasises the frontline nature of the care offered and the need to incorporate psychological and sociological perspectives alongside biomedical ones.
The general practitioner is a specialist trained to work in the front line of a healthcare system and to take the initial steps to provide care for any health problem(s) that patients may have.
The general practitioner takes care of individuals in a society, irrespective of the patient's type of disease or other personal and social characteristics, and organises the resources available in the healthcare system to the best advantage of the patients.
The general practitioner engages with autonomous individuals across the fields of prevention, diagnosis, cure, care, and palliation, using and integrating the sciences of biomedicine, medical psychology, and medical sociology.
Source
Heath, I., Evans, P., van Weel, C. (2000). The specialist of the discipline of general practice. BMJ 320: 326-327
Olesen F, Dickinson J, Hjortdahl P. General practice: time for a new definition. BMJ 2000; 320: 354-357