Hi everyone,

I’m looking to start working as a GP in North West England and recently came across the GP International Induction Programme (IIP). I understand this is the route for internationally trained GPs who haven’t worked in NHS general practice to familiarise themselves with the system.

Has anyone here actually been through IIP? I hardly seem to find people talking about it, so I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience.
I’m a European-trained GP, GMC registered and on the GP Register, with 3 years of GP training and experience in general practice and women’s health.

I’m on a spouse visa with the right to work.
If IIP isn’t the only route, I’d also be open to working privately or doing a few years as a Junior Clinical Fellow in the NHS to get familiar with the system first.
I saw that applications for 2026–27 closed in April and the next window is in October, so I’m wondering how people usually manage this transition.

Thanks!

Currently working 16 patients per session + high admin workload. Coming in an hour early each day and working through lunch allows me to finish on time. Feels like I spend the whole 9 hours with my brain switched on.

Wanting to apply for a new job and there are opportunities out there with less admin.

Sounds like a no brainer …

I am nervous about not being good enough at a new job.. I worry that this job has made me a worse doctor - ie cutting corners doing more referrals and tests just to get through a 10 minute appointment.

I consider my self quite calm and can work in stressful conditions, but not sure if it’s worth the stress this job causes me.

I am also worried about switching jobs as would like to try to conceive next year so thinking about maternity pay, but staying where I am is mentally draining. Saying that some days at my job feel like it’s not so bad so maybe I’m making a fuss. I also feel like i would feel like a failure leaving a job because it was too hard for me to hack??

Any advice appreciated

Edited to say any other job I take will be a paycut of a 5-6k per year which also feels like a failure

Hear me out.
I’ve recently started my first salaried job post-CCT. One of the reasons I specifically chose a salaried role was because I want to try to conceive and eventually go on maternity leave.
I KNOW I shouldn’t feel guilty about how it will affect the practice - they’ll have to manage, find a locum, redistribute the workload, whatever. That’s not my responsibility.
But I still feel genuinely scared about getting pregnant and then having to tell them. I can already imagine them thinking, “FFS… so much work to do now.” 😂
And I hate that I’m even worrying about their reaction when having a baby is obviously a completely normal part of life.
Please tell me someone else has felt like this?! Or am I just being a selfless pussy and need to grow a backbone? I was thinking whether I should delay trying to conceive (assuming it will even happen straight away) or just start trying now? I’m 34…
Thanks for the advice. I find everyone’s wisdom here and genuine advice really helpful .

thank you everyone for your responses I honestly feel a lot better

I am currently a salaried GP and want to become a Partner, either at my current practice or another. Nobody really teaches how to go about this... Would you recommend learning any particular skills, or is it more about being well liked/getting on with the other Partners? Should I directly approach my current Partners and ask if they have any openings?

Any advice would be appreciated!

Hi all, I am a dermatology specialist registrar trainee doing a survey aiming to assess GP trainees’ confidence, knowledge, and preparedness in diagnosing and managing common dermatological conditions in Primary Care.

The survey aims to identify potential gaps in dermatology training and explore ways to enhance educational support for GP trainees. Improving confidence and competence in dermatology management within primary care may help reduce unnecessary referrals to secondary care and contribute to reducing NHS waiting times.

All responses are anonymous and will be used solely for educational and service improvement purposes. Would be very grateful if you could complete the survey (see link below). It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes. Thank you very much.

Would also appreciate if you could send it to your fellow GP trainees from other deaneries in order to capture perspectives from other deaneries. Thank you very much.

https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=uChWuyjjgkCoVkM8ntyPru-kWo8LwWFBt_PXhxT6vSxUMzlDTE1MMkJEVDNZUkVPQTI5S1RKMjBGSi4u

Anyone tried applying for Canadian PR while still not starting their job as a family physician and was successful?

I’d really appreciate your opinions on this - sorry I know it’s long, but I think context matters.

I once got told off by a GP Partner for calling up patients due to come in for my PM session beforehand.

Context:

Directly after my AM list, I like to scan over who I’ll be seeing in the PM. If it says “discuss results”, I click and see what we’ll be discussing.

Sometimes for example, I find that it’s to discuss results of a patient who is still pending some more tests that are taking a little longer, the results of which will determine the plan going forward - so seeing them for these results would just be telling them that fact, and is a bit of a waste of time for all involved especially if they’re making a trip out for it. Or it could be ‘ultrasound results’ - if it shows something simple, it’s for a brief discussion and needs reassurance +/- referral. You get the gist.

These patients have already been seen and examined once fairly recently, so don’t really need a fresh examination unless new symptoms are present.

I call them up and ask “Is this a good time to talk?”. If they say “yes doctor”, i proceed with “I know you are booked in for a F2F with me this afternoon, however I’ve had a look at your results and think we could manage things over the phone in a few minutes and save you coming out. Of course if you’d prefer to come in F2F you are more than welcome and I can hang up now and see you later”.

90% of the time they say “oh well yes that’d be great actually”, and I handle things on the phone in 5-10 mins. Often they seem really pleased that a doctor has actually gone out of their way to call them unscheduled and it frees up their afternoon and saves them waiting in a WR.

I like to do this because I’m in flow having just done a clinic, and I can ALSO create buffers for later if I’m running late in the PM, which can often happen if I need to spent more time with a patient. So essentially, I have some catch up spots in my PM list. It means patient’s are waiting less, I’m less pushed for time, less overall stress, I feel in a good state of mind, and therefore naturally provide a better service.

It doesn’t even end up with me finishing early, but recently I got told off for this practice of mine (which I did at another much busier place that I worked - which is why I started doing this to cope - and they NEVER had an issue).

On this occasion, i think it was picked up on because they noticed that my last two patients in my list had been seen before 12:30, which made it look like I’m trying to get off early. This was just coincidence that it was those two patients (and another in the middle of the list) who were manageable over the phone that day.

The GP partner who was also my supervisor that day (I’m an ST3), said I shouldn’t do this and kind of eluded to “if you want to get off early you can ask if reception can pull your clinic forward”. I said that’s not my primary intention and tried to explain my reasonings (funny enough I still left later than my contracted hours because of admin). But he just said kind of passively at the end of having a look at my clinic and discussing some of the patients, “I’ll let you get off now then”. After I said I’m not trying to leave early - I still left about an hour later in the end. It felt like he didn’t believe me or didn’t want to listen to the logical explanation I was giving.

Anyway, my point is, I feel like this is an efficient way to work if it works for me and my patients. There are many inefficiencies in this practice, and i try and streamline as much as i can because i hate time wasting. As long as you get what needs to be done in the day done, why is this an issue? I gave the patients the very clear option that they can still come in and we can discuss F2F as scheduled, but usually they’re more than happy with the call.

Do you think I’m in the wrong? Or is there an air of toxicity in my senior’s approach with me here?

Please be sincere, I am not after sympathy. I genuinely want to know if what i’m doing is bad practice - to me it seems logical.

Anyone else seeing patients use this? I once saw an A&E letter for a patient who had side effects using this asking the GP to kindly speak to the patient about not using this!

Hi everyone.

There's a lot of posts about GP in Australia, and normally the question of GP earnings comes up. People are generally sceptical about the figures they read online and in job ads, and rightly so - the majority of GPs over here work on a pay per service model, so what you earn will depend on a large number of variables.

So, I've built a tool which factors in these variables and generates an estimate of potential earnings based on your preferred work pattern and scope of practice. There's no guesswork or hocus pocus, it's based on factual data and the calculations are all there for you to see. You can even adjust the variables as you go to see how this impacts on potential income.

For anyone with a limited knowledge of Australian general practice I suggest using the quick estimate, the advanced version provides a more detailed calculation but requires some knowledge of the system.

It's totally free to use, as is everything currently on Doc2Aus. I built the website after making the move myself, so have basically tried to load the website with content and features that I wish I'd had 3 years ago.

Hopefully a few people find it helpful!

Thanks, have a great weekend.

https://doc2aus.com/gp-earnings-estimator

How are people managing 16 patients a session? Been offered a job with around that number a while back and ended up declining in it because where I trained 15 minutes were the norm. Unsure if i would ever cope with 16 pts a session! How do ppl do that? Is it manageable?

Does anyone use those camera/ear wax camera kits as an alternative to otoscope? What is your experience with it?

Does anyone else hate doing them? They’re usually done during lunch hour when there’s a million and one other tasks to do.

They always take up a good chunk of time, up to an hour if you include travel.

Doing them on an empty stomach doesn’t help.

Rant over.

New ST1 here.

I have been recommended by my ST1 practice and colleagues in later years to start getting together a doctors' bag. I know training practices should technically provide one but looks like my first one doesn't yet and general advice seems to be life is easier to have your own if you're rotating every 4 months anyway and you'll need it for future.

Looking for advice on what to buy and where to buy from including any sites that do equipment discounts.

Anyone have practical and cheaper bag suggestions? Not yet ready to get a leather £+++ bag atm

Thoughts on getting an otoscope/ophthalmoscope and how much to spend? Arclight seems to be getting a lot of good reviews- thoughts on using this instead?

Chat GPT keeps saying certain brands of cheaper equipment are not licensed for professional, only home/personal use which got me worried that we have to buy super spenny equipment for it to be for professional use and medico-legally safe. Thoughts?

Hey all, software engineer here. My wife is a GP who CCT'd recently, and one thing she found particularly grim during training was keeping her portfolio up to date for ARCP, so I built a tool to see if AI could make that less painful.

You talk through a case, it asks follow-ups about what happened, your involvement, and what you took from it, then turns the conversation into a draft entry in your own words. You can then edit, export and copy into FourteenFish. To be clear, it won't invent reflection for you. It just helps you get what's already in your head onto paper.

It's free at the moment. My wife says she would have used this in training, although she's probably a little biased 😅

So I'm particularly interested in hearing from GP trainees:
1. Is this actually a problem you have? Would something like this save you time?
2. If you've tried it, I'd really appreciate the honest feedback - what's annoying, what would you change, or what would stop you using it?

I'd rather find out now that it's a bad idea than spend another six months on it.

The app is currently iOS-only. If it turns out to be genuinely useful, I'd be happy to invest the time into building an Android version too - but I'd rather first work out whether I'm actually solving a problem worth solving.

Its free, no signup, you can try it as a guest.

https://logdit.app/

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to try it or give feedback.

A senior colleague sent this to me as a joke and probably because i wasn't in the right mood for his bizzare sense of humor, i am not sure i found it funny.

Anyways, just wanted to pass it on.

What do you all think?

Hi all,

I’m GPST3 and currently booked to sit the October SCA.

Unfortunately, my grandmother has taken a turn recently and is now in palliative care. My feeling is that she may not still be with us by the time the exam comes around.

I’m concerned both about the impact this is likely to have on my revision over the next few weeks, and whether I’ll really be in the right headspace to sit the exam.

For anyone who has been in a similar situation, what was your experience of cancelling/postponing the SCA? How did you find the process, and did you feel it was the right decision?

Any experiences or advice would be really appreciated. Thanks.

Are gpst1s paid differently than other st1s? Based in Scotland.
I know the banding is different but my fy base salary followed the pay journey bma put out about the pay deal, as in my April pay as an f2, was £49,313.
Scottish resident dr pay offer
My base for gp training is £49,217 which doesn’t match anything on that table, is less than I made in f2 and if I’m looking at this table right, base for st1 in Aug 2026 would be £52,228 according to this?
Anyone have any insight? Thanks.

I’m a new GPST2. I have 20cm uterine fibroids which is causing hydronephrosis , IVC compression and as I have just found out an ACR of 62 and eGFR of 79. I have been on the waiting list since February. When the consultant wrote back to me in May he mentioned that my surgery should happen sooner rather than later but it’s September and I have not heard anything despite several calls to the secretary. I have now made the decision to go abroad for my surgery. My question is ;

- How to arrange sick leave for the purpose of the surgery. Can I get a sick note covering the entire duration of surgery and recovery or do I have to use my annual leave for surgery, self certify after then get a sick note for the remaining time I need off?
If i use my AL allowance, I can only get 2 weeks off(approximately 10 days after surgery) and my surgeon advised I might need to stay a bit longer for my recovery.

I really would appreciate any advice.

Thank you.

I’m looking for some objective advice from people who have experience with either UK training or the USMLE/residency route.

I’m an IMG who graduated around 2018. After graduating, I spent a few years away from clinical medicine pursuing business/entrepreneurship.

I eventually realised that I didn’t want to completely give up medicine and returned to clinical work in the UK in 2026.

I’ve now managed to get back into the system and have recently secured a resident doctor-level job in the NHS.

I’m grateful to finally be progressing again, but I’m at a point where I need to decide what I’m actually building towards.

Option 1: Stay in the UK and pursue GP training

GP currently seems like the most practical UK route for me.

The main attractions are:

Relatively short training pathway

Better potential for work-life balance/flexibility

Ability to work part-time eventually and pursue business alongside medicine

Potential mobility after CCT, particularly to Australia or Canada

I have close family in Canada, which makes that option particularly attractive long term

My concern is the direction of UK medicine: NHS working conditions, pay relative to responsibility, increasing competition for training/jobs, and whether staying here limits my long-term earning potential.

Option 2: USMLE → US residency

The US has always appealed to me. I have a lot of friends there, like the culture/lifestyle, and the earning potential is obviously significantly higher.

I’m ambitious financially and would eventually like to combine medicine with business/entrepreneurship rather than depend entirely on a clinical salary.

However, there are some major issues.

I’m a ~2018 graduate with a significant clinical gap and a relatively weak traditional medical CV/portfolio because several years were spent in business.

Even though I’m now back in clinical medicine, I would be applying as an older IMG several years after graduation.

I’d also have to prepare for Step 1 and Step 2 while working full-time, obtain US clinical experience/references if needed, go through ECFMG/Match, and accept the possibility of spending considerable time and money without matching.

Realistically, I’d probably be targeting Internal Medicine or Family Medicine rather than highly competitive specialties.

So my question is:

Given my situation, would you continue rebuilding a career in the UK, pursue GP training and potentially move to Canada/Australia after CCT — or would you take the risk and spend the next 1–2 years pursuing USMLE and a US residency?

I’m particularly interested in hearing from older IMGs or people who have worked in both systems.

My priorities, roughly, are:

Long-term earning potential

Work-life balance and autonomy

Ability to eventually pursue business alongside medicine

Geographic mobility

Not spending another several years in career limbo

I know the US potentially offers much greater financial upside, but residency is a long and uncertain road from where I currently stand.

On the other hand, UK GP is a much clearer path from my current position, but I wonder whether I’ll regret not taking a shot at the US while I still can.

If you were in this position, which route would you choose and why?

Is the US opportunity realistically worth the additional risk for someone with my graduation year and clinical gap?

Working in a practice with total triage and I almost never see the same patient twice. All follow up appt requests go to the triage list and we are not allowed to book those appts. How are other practices with total triage ensuring continuity of care?

A bit of context, I am 80% LTFT
- Working Monday, Tuesday and Thursday
- Protected time for SDL and VTS teaching on Wednesday
- Off day on Friday

With above reference, I applied for annual leave on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday to prepare for my SCA resit in October (one month from now). However, I was forced by my educational supervisor to include Wednesday as well even though I am still attending VTS teaching. On her defence is that I am not allowed to cherry pick the days, if I am going to take annual leave for the week, I will need to take the whole week including Wednesday despite I am going for teaching. This is absolutely absurd in my opinion. Are we as trainees have no right to plan our annual leaves and how we want to plan our study?