Training Opportunities

The acute medical take has a high turnover of patients with varied pathology. Trainees have the opportunity to manage the acute take either with direct or indirect supervision. Higher specialty trainees will also hold the medical referral bleep from the emergency department and out-of-hours GPs.

At Ipswich, there is weekly departmental teaching where trainees take it in turns to teach on a topic of interest and present complex cases. Colchester, provides the majority of their teaching at the bedside and prioritises learning in this way. There is also the opportunity to teach medical students that attend the department on placement.

AMSDEC offers important training opportunities for managing patients in a clinic/outpatient setting.

There are daily consultantled ward rounds which enable opportunities for bedside teaching and work based assessments, including case-based discussions and acute care assessment tools (ACAT).

On the acute medical wards there is always a high volume of clinical procedures including lumbar puncture, abdominal paracentesis and chest drains. Consultants and senior registrars are readily available to support with these.