General practice and the Foundation Programme

摘要

The reform of postgraduate medical education and the inception of the Foundation Programme in 2005 saw the creation of new opportunities for junior doctors in the community setting. The target was to allow 55% of foundation trainees to have a placement in general practice. Five years on, in October 2010, Medical Education England (MEE) published Foundation for Excellence -An Evaluation of the Foundation Programme. This included data from the UK Foundation Programme Office report 2009 showing that we are far from meeting those targets. At the time of writing, only 16% of rotations included a community placement.2 How these figures can be improved and, in fact, whether there is value in doing so, is a key issue for debate.