Tips for your GP Registrar Year

Day Release Course (DRC)

Simply stated this is to help you to become an effective and happy GP equipped to face the clinical challenges and administrative changes of the next 30 years of professional life.

The objectives of the DRC are discussed on the Aims and Objectives of the DRC page.

Basic resources - should be readily available to you. These are both human (almost) and written.

1) Your trainer -

who should either know the answer or know a man who does.

2) Your practice manager -

will often be able to help you on financial matters and be able to link you in with . . . . . .

Your Health Authority staff - especially the finance director who will ensure that your practice receive money to pay your salary! The situation is very complex.

Some training practices work under GMS (general medical services), whilst others have moved on to PMS (personal medical services).

In the former a complex contract revolving around “the red book” – the statement of fees and allowances - has a specific section detailing GP registrar pay and allowances. This is worth looking at, as it includes generous relocation expenses and allowances for such essentials as telephone and cars. It should still apply even if your practice has moved to a simplified contract in PMS.

3) The GP Registrar’s Learning Diary -

on training for general practice contains much detailed information and guidance on contractual and educational aspects of the trainee year.

Outside the practice help in various areas can be obtained from –

4) Your Course Organisers whose expertise tends to be in an educational rather than an administrative direction!

5) Your Associate Director Postgraduate GP Education (Robin While) who is the highest ranking local official in the GP training hierarchy and who has direct access to the Regional Director Postgraduate GP Education (Frank Smith), who can be consulted for major problems.

6) Your Assistant & Secretary in the Dept of General Practice at the is Paula Cain, who has a fund of useful information at her fingertips. She acts as a contact point for all issues relating to the DRC whether you come from Bath, Swindon or Cirencester.

The details of the GP teaching hierarchy can be found on the Who's Who page. There is also a mechanism for making GP Registrars’ views known at Deanery level via your local GPR representative on the General Practice Education Committee. Details in the Learning Diary.

E-mail

All communications to the course participants are sent via e-mail.

We usually manage the 40 or so e-mail addresses as part of a “Yahoo group”.

This means that if you click the “reply” button, your message will automatically go to everyone on the mailing list. This is fine, if this is what you want, but if not (for example I would like extra chips for lunch) you should click the “forward to” button and type in Paula's ( ) or another address.

Contract and Money

"Maslow's hierarchy of needs" suggests that you cannot easily deal with higher intellectual activities such as learning and abstract thought until basic needs are dealt with.

Most of this will involve your training practice but we suggest that very early on in the registrar year you -

Agree with your trainer on such issues as -

half days
study leave (see later)
holidays
what will be expected of you in the practice
on call commitment for nights, weekends and bank holidays
what teaching you will receive, when and from whom
and the equipping of your doctors bag.

This should all be in your contract which should be signed very early in your registrar year. (Your Learning Diary provides a model) . . . . and . . .

Meet with your practice manager to sort out finances which should include, as well as basic salary and "on call allowance", a car allowance (to which different tax rules are applied in different areas) and possibly removal or accommodation expenses if you have had to move as part of a VTS or have to use on call accommodation away from your main residence. You should also be entitled to a telephone allowance. Non-NHS items such as cremation fees and insurance medicals should go into the practice pool.

Next page: Education and Learning in the GPR Year

Last update: 06 November 2003