Academic Clinical Fellowship

JOB DESCRIPTION

ACADEMIC CLINICAL FELLOWSHIP

IN GERIATRIC MEDICINE

ST3 LEVEL

October 2015

ACADEMIC CLINICAL FELLOWSHIP IN GERIATRIC MEDICINE AT ST3 LEVEL

HEALTH EDUCATION EAST OF ENGLAND

The Specialist Training postwill be appointed at ST3leveland provide funding for up to three years. The principal aim of the ACF scheme is to allow academically gifted clinical trainees the opportunity for 25% protected research training alongside completion of intermediate training in geriatric medicine and to formulate and submit an externally funded Research Training Fellowship (RTF) (e.g. MRC, Wellcome Trust, BHF). If candidates are unsuccessful in obtaining funding for a RTF/PhD, they would transfer into non-ACF ST5+ posts and pursue full time clinical sub-specially training (a become an NTN). It is anticipated that all successful ACFs completing RTFs would be in a strong position tocompete for Clinical Lecturer posts following award of their higher research degree, as per the Integrated Academic Training programme. This post will attract a NTN(A).

Locality

The ACFwill be based in Health Education East of England. Clinical training will be based at Bedford Hospital (Years 1 and 2) and Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge (Year 3). Rotation to other hospitals in the region will be undertaken as required to fulfill training needs. Academic time can be based at either the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge or at Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia.

Bedford Hospital:

Bedford Hospital NHS Trust is a 400 bed, high performing acute district general hospital committed to providing a caring and safe environment for patients and staff. The Trust provides a range of services to over 270,000 people living predominantly in north and mid Bedfordshire and is the vascular hub for the county.

Bedford Hospital has earned a reputation for the high quality of its services. The Trust has been named as one of the ”top 40‟ hospitals for eight successive years by the independent data analyst CHKS, was rated 'good' in this year's PEAT (Patient Environment Action Teams) assessment by the NPSA and was given a 'good' rating for quality of services by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The Trust consistently scores well in the annual Dr Foster Good Hospital Guide and has won many prestigious awards for the quality of food, cleanliness and operational performance.

Bedford Hospital has over 2000 members of staff and a current turnover of approximately £121million. The hospital enjoys strong community support with over 200 volunteers at the Trust and over £6 million being raised by the independent Bedford Hospitals Charity over the past 10 years. The fantastic support from the hospital charity has enabled the Trust to build a dedicated cancer centre (the Macmillan Primrose unit), the women's and children's services wing (Cygnet wing) and a new midwife led birthing unit (the Acorn Suite).

Addenbrooke’s:

Addenbrooke's was granted Trust status from 1 April 1993. It offers a full range of acute, maternity and mental health services, which are provided from two main hospital sites - Addenbrooke's Hospital and FulbournHospital. Community psychiatry and midwifery services form part of the service ensuring continuity for those patients who are more appropriately cared for in their own communities.

Addenbrooke's Hospital (approx. 1100 beds) lies on the southern boundary of Cambridge city occupying a 66 acre site which is shared by the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, the Medical Research Council, the Regional Blood Transfusion Centre and the Parke Davis Research Institute. Close links with the University have given the hospital an international reputation for converting research and development into practical health care. The hospital has a long history of training first class doctors and offers excellent opportunities for training in biomedical computing, molecular biology, medical statistics, health service management as well as higher specialist training.

The RosieMaternityHospital (94 beds and 19 special care cots) is also located on the Addenbrooke's site and includes the Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

FulbournHospital (366 beds) is situated on the outskirts of Cambridge, approximately 3 miles from the Addenbrooke's site. It provides the main in-patient base for general and specialised psychiatric services supplemented by out-patient and community services.

Addenbrooke's Hospital employs over 7,000 staff and offers both a district general hospital service to a more local constituency and is a specialist referral centre for a wider catchment population. Some special services, such as bowel/liver transplantation, draw patients supra-regionally or internationally.

University of Cambridge Clinical School

The University of Cambridge has granted medical degrees since 1540. The ClinicalSchool of the University, which was formally established in 1975, admitted its first clinical students the following year and at present admits about 130 students each year. The ClinicalSchool has its base at Addenbrooke's Hospital where purpose built accommodation for the school, comprising lecture theatres, seminar rooms, medical library (which includes 900 serials) and postgraduate medical centre, was opened in 1980. In addition to receiving clinical instruction at Addenbrooke's Hospital and other hospitals in and around Cambridge, clinical students undertake part of their training in hospitals further afield in the East Anglian and neighbouring regions; they also spend short periods attached to general practices throughout East Anglia. The teaching programme is co-ordinated by the clinical dean. Cambridge is arguably the premier biomedical research centre in Europe. Over recent years four new research institutes have been built on the Addenbrookes site, which also houses the MRC laboratory of Molecular Biology. The major ClinicalSchool departments were all top-rated in the recent research selectivity exercise.

University of East Anglia, Norwich Medical School

The Medical School at UEA was established in 2001 (Inaugural Head of School: Professor Sam Leinster) and has over 160 members of academic, research and support staff - and a large number of active NHS secondees and honorary appointees - from a wide range of disciplines (including medical specialties, biological sciences and a range of social and statistical disciplines, including health economics, psychology, epidemiology, and medical statistics). The School has grown with a current entry each year of 168 students. Its first students graduated in 2007 and in 2008 the Medical degree programme came sixth out of the 32 UK medical schools in the national Student Satisfaction Survey.

This is an exciting time for the medical school as it has opened a new £19M research and teaching building opposite the A&E dept of NNUH. This building provides state of the art laborator, office space and facilitates joint working between the medical school and the hospital. Furthermore new research institute, The Centre for Food and Health, is being established in a new building which will be adjacent to the new medical school building. This £75M building is at an advanced stage of planning and will open at the end of 2017. Gastroenterology, microbiology and nutrition will be major research themes in this new institute. Furthermore the endoscopy department of NNUH will be housed within the new building. This juxtaposition of gastroenterologists and with scientists researching topics relevant to GI disease will create a national centre for gastroenterology and nutrition research.

The School promotes interdisciplinary teaching and learning and offers a wide range of programmes including:

an innovative and highly integrated five-year MB/BS programme commenced in 2002 with an initial intake of 110 students per year, now 168 students per year

a one year research intensive Masters degree in Health Research (MRes) supplying research experience and transferrable skills

the modular MSc programme in Health Sciences for the continuing professional development of a wide range of health care professionals (currently attracting over 100 registered students including GPs and junior hospital doctors)

a Masters in Clinical Education (MClinEd) degree

a doctoral programme (ClinPsyD) in clinical psychology (with over 60 postgraduate students on the programme)

the degrees of PhD, MPhil and MD, awarded by thesis or by portfolio of published work.

There are a growing number of clinical academics in the areas of stroke and ageing; respiratory medicine; gastroenterology; clinical pharmacology; cardiology; surgery; primary care; public health and epidemiology; rheumatology; diabetes and orthopaedics. The Medical School has received an allocation of Walport academic training posts amounting to two new Academic Clinical Fellowships and one new clinical lectureships for each of the next three years. There are exciting possibilities for appointees to develop clinical trials within the Clinical Trials Unit as well as experimental medicine within the seven bed Clinical Research Facility (CRF). The School is committed to appropriate multi-disciplinary working and the post holder will find excellent on-going collaborations across a wide range of disciplines.

Aims of the Academic Clinical Fellowship

The main aim of these posts is to allow individuals to be exposed to academic environments and research techniques that would inform their choice of subsequent full time research training and provide the senior academic input needed to support the submission of an externally funded RTF. As such, the research components are not constrained. For example, an individual may wish to undertake an initial project involving basic molecular and cell biology followed by periods undertaking translational and/or patient based studies. Alternatively, an individual may be interested in exploring different research techniques and/or wish to spend their entire research time working in a single research area.

The ACF will be recruited at ST3 or ST4 level, and will undergo three years higherspecialty training during which they will undertake general and geriatric medicine as per the specialty curriculum in Addenbrookes and Bedford Hospitals and have the opportunity to participate in the program of studies coordinated by the Clinical Academic Training Office (CATO; with the option of obtaining an MPhil in Clinical Science.

It is expected thatthe successful candidate will spend 75% of their time in clinical training and 25% of their time in research. This academic time will be spent in acquiring research skills and pilot data in preparation for a Research Training fellowship application, which would support study for a PhD degree.

Academic component

There are opportunities across the following research areas; epidemiology and public health, health services, clinical frailty, stroke medicine and dementia. The research groups are located in Cambridge or UEA depending on the location of the supervisor. Potential supervisors and their research themes are listed below.

Epidemiology and public health; Professor K-T Khaw (Cambridge) Professor Carol Brayne(Cambridge)

Research themes; cognitive function and ageing with longitudinal cohorts (Brayne), Maintenance of health in later life and the causes and prevention of chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer and osteoporosis with a focus on nutrition and hormones (Khaw)

Health Services Research; Professor Martin Roland (Cambridge), Dr Roman Romero-Ortuno (Cambridge).

Research themes; Measuring quality of care and evaluating interventions to improve care in the NHS (Roland), Clinical frailty research (Romero-Ortuno).

Dementia; Dr Dennis Chan (Cambridge): Research theme; structure-function studies of hippocampal formation subdivisions in early Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia utilizing imaging.

Stroke;Professor Hugh Markus, Dr Liz Warburton, Professor Jonathan Mant (Cambridge) Professor John Potter and Professor Valerie Pomeroy (UEA)

Research themes: Small vessel disease imaging and genetics (Markus), molecular imaging of atheroma and acute stroke (Warburton), stroke services research in primary care (Mant), hypertension, dementia and vascular studies (Potter), motor rehabilitation/recovery (Pomeroy) and aphasia (Warburton).

Clinicalcomponent

This post is a new locally funded Academic Clinical Fellow which is part of the existing comprehensive training programme in General(Internal) medicine [(G(I)M)] and Geriatric medicinebased in the Eastern Deanery and will be indistinguishable from the mainstream ST3+ post. This post has full LETB approval and is actually a normal NTN (national training number(that has been selectively converted to an academic NTN for these three years). Following completion of the 3 years, the trainee will seamlessly move into a non academic NTN to complete training, unless they successfully acquire a further competitive training post (see above), e.g. a clinical lectureship post.

The objective of the clinical training would be to help the post holder gain the specific competencies laid out in the new curriculum towards acquisition of Dual CCT in G(I)M and geriatric medicine.

The post holder will receive 9 months of clinical training per year, which will count as 12 months towards their CCT. The duties during the clinical component will be the same as the duties undertaken by the other G(I)M/Geriatrics ST3+s in the Hospital. Bedford previously had 2 ST3+s (1 of which has been converted to this post).

The post will involve participating in the normal pro-rata on call commitments and night cover duties identical to the other ST3+ trainees in G(I)M and Geriatric medicine at each trust. The trainee will be required to fulfill the full out of hours on call commitments for the trust for the full 12 months per year and not just during the 9 months clinical component. This will be tailored flexibly to suit the academic training needs of the trainee. This will then attract appropriate banding as per the other new ST3+ trainees in the trust.

Education supervision for the clinical component will be provided by a consultant geriatrician working at the same trust.

The Trainees clinical duties will be supported by CMT1-2 level and FY1-FY2 level junior colleagues attached to their respective firms. The trainees will have opportunity to provide clinical supervision to junior colleagues

Academic Programme Director: Dr Liz

Clinical Programme Director: Dr James

For further information please contact: Health Education East of England, 2-4 Victoria House, Capital Park, Fulbourn, Cambridge, CB21 5XB

Alternatively, please visit the NIHR website: