Teaching
It is a recognition of the high standards that we have achieved, that we have been accredited as a teaching practice - and there are few things more rewarding than being able to take part in and shape the training of tomorrow's doctors.
Registrars
A "Registrar" is a very experienced doctor who will already have worked in several specialties in hospital medicine. He or she will have finally decided on a career in General Practice, and will have chosen Fovant as the place to conclude their training before finally getting a practice of their own.
These doctors bring all manner of skills into the practice: they will have very up to date knowledge of a range of specialities including General Medicine, ENT, Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Psychiatry and so forth. What they need from us is a grounding in the more common ailments that we see so much of in the community.
Registrars come to us for 6 month or 12 month attachments before qualifying as GPs.
Medical Students
We frequently take undergraduate Medical Students from Southampton University Medical School.
Students have a different role to Registrars: they are not yet qualified and are not allowed to change a patient's treatment or to prescribe. They are here to learn as much as they can before their exams and especially to understand how illnesses affect people's lives, not just their bodies.
The Video
Occasionally we may ask your permission for a discrete camera to record consultations (never examinations). This may seem intrusive to a private personal consultation, and we would not ask to do this unless there were both very good reason, and an absolute assurance of maintaining confidentiality.
The reason is this: only you see us, we can not see ourselves; we do not see how we appear to you, nor do we normally have the chance to review our ability at picking up clues and signs from the complex interchange between the doctor and the patient. The video recording allows us to do these things: we can see ourselves the way you see us and learn how to gather information and answer your concerns more effectively. This is an incredibly powerful teaching tool, so much so that a doctor can pass or fail his exams on his performance on video.
You will be asked to sign a form if the video is to be used and you agree to it. The form is not so much your permission, as our absolute assurance to you that the recording will only be used for teaching purposes and will never be viewed by any unauthorised person who is not directly concerned with your care or the training of the doctor.
Your Cooperation
The greatest training tool we have is not the surgery facilities nor the teaching of the doctors, it is you the patients. Without your help and cooperation we can not help young doctors to become even better and more experienced. Of course we would all wish for all doctors to be expert, but they can not become so without learning and gaining experience.
The doctors take a very close interest in our registrars: their experience is assessed, they are interviewed, and only those who are deemed suitable are accepted to this practice. During their time with us in Fovant, the cases that they see are discussed with the doctors so that their actions are being supervised and the doctors know what is going on with their patients. In many cases, the Registrar's knowledge of some conditions is more up to date than ours.
You have a choice: you are not obliged to see training doctors and we understand that it will always seem preferable to see the doctor who knows you best, and who has the most experience. It might also apparently seem reasonable to see a training doctor with something simple, but leave the long term or more concerning problems to the doctors. But you can imagine that what would ensue would be doctors going out into the world trained only in sore throats and sprained ankles. So please trust our judgement: these young doctors need to be experienced and will refer to the doctors for support and supervision in all cases. Help us to help you, both now and for the future.