The day release course

Where is it?

The Oxford District full day release course takes place at the George Pickering Postgraduate Centre, Level 3, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, facilitated by programme directors Mandy Fry, Penny Moore and Meriel Raine and course manager Barbara Wallis, as well as by visiting speakers from different fields in medicine and other related disciplines.

What does it cover?

In 2007 the RCGP introduced a detailed curriculum for GP training and trainees need to become familiar with what it covers. While ensuring that topics are covered in a way that is mindful of the college curriculum, the programme directors try to provide variety in the timetable over the year, using small-group work, where the registrars contribute and encourage each other, and more focused topic-based sessions resourced by local clinicians. Twice a month there is the opportunity for Self Directed Learning Groups to meet or work as they see fit.

There are also County courses, held approximately monthly with the Oxfordshire GP registrars from Banbury, on:

  • nMRCGP requirements - (see also below) 
  • Risk management
  • Child protection
  • Living with disability
  • Psychological medicine
  • Evidence-based medicine
  • Complementary medicine
  • Ethics
  • Multicultural medicine.


Over the year there is access to courses with registrars from the other schemes in the Oxford Deanery, on:

  • Family planning & sexual health (STIF)
  • Minor surgery
  • Child health surveillance


There is also provision of basic life support training, which has been a prerequisite for the MRCGP.

Click here to see a sample day-release timetable.

A supportive group

As important as the content of the day-release is the fact that the course provides a protected, supportive and confidential environment for registrars to build a peer group and learn from each other. A key aim is to help GP registrars improve their communication skills - with each other, with other colleagues, and of course with patients.

nMRCGP

Registrars are now assessed by means of the nMRCGP, in place of Summative Assessment and the MRCGP exam. For full details on the structure of the nMRCGP, including the various assessments involved over the year, see www.rcgp.org.uk.  An important part of the nMRCGP is the use of a personalised e-portfolio, recording one's own learning and assessments over the whole time of GP training.

Do I have to attend the day-release?

Yes. Attending the day-release is part of your contract. If you choose not to attend then your practice would expect you to be working with them, or to have made explicit alternative study arrangements.

Flexibility to meet your needs

Beyond the set courses and key topics, the day-release has flexibility, because the role of the GP is ever-changing, and because each group of registrars has different needs. This may be the first time you have had to concentrate on learning since undergraduate days. The difference about how you learn now, as an adult, is that you are much more likely to be framing your learning on problems as you encounter them, rather than by subject, and that you have developed your own learning style and preferences, as well as a wealth of experience.

Adults generally use all of this much better in group work than in didactic lectures, hence the emphasis on small groups in many day release programmes. Obviously some things are better taught to a large group as lectures/demonstrations etc, so there is a mixture throughout the year.

We aim to widen the learning experience, so a book club, work with actors, a reflective group picnic in the country, and a trip to Tate Modern have all been included, and popular, in the past.

In the summer, registrars visit each other's practices to explore different ways of organising and delivering care.


  

Email: info@oxfordvts.org.uk
 

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