The Boston programme has an enthusiastic and interactive programme and training is a unique opportunity in this rural area, with low cost of living and excellent schools.
Dr Stephen Cass
Marisco Medical Practice, Mablethorpe
Current Boston Programme Director and GP Specialty Trainer
If you’re thinking seriously about a career in general practice, then congratulations – you could be about to make the best decision in your professional life since going to medical school.
General practice, without a doubt, gives you the broadest clinical opportunities of all the possible medical careers – the widest scope both to do good for your patients and to feed and satisfy your intellectual curiosity about their problems and diseases. What problems or symptoms does your patient bring to you? What could the differential diagnosis be, at this earliest stage of presentation? How can you examine and investigate to test your hypotheses and to act to treat, advise and reassure your patient? And how can you help and palliate during their final diagnosis?
To prepare you for these challenges, the UK is fortunate to have a world-class system of GP professional training, mimicked and copied the world over. You will have one-to-one and small group teaching with both your GP trainer and the key players in the general practice team, and you will finish your training by passing exams with a broad, international reputation for fairness, consistency and validity.
General practice led the way in discovering flexible, family-friendly routes to training and employment. Currently, the range of possible working patterns in general practice – self-employed or employed – is greater than for a generation. General practice is one the most efficient and cost-effective parts of the NHS, and currently political parties are competing with each another for ideas to wrench commissioning influence back from the bureaucracy and to direct it to GPs. General practice looks forward to further NHS investment as these factors become more nationally important, and with this investment will come more numerous, well-paid job opportunities, both as associates and as partners.
So, are you up to it? Are you ready to earn the respect of your patients, when they rate GPs consistently as one of the best-regarded professions in the country? Are you ready to contribute to and perhaps lead your team to greater patient benefit and for satisfying, well-rewarded work? The choice is yours!
Dr Graham Wheatley
Munro Medical Centre, Spalding
Current Boston GP Specialty trainer