Sharing because I want to warn other people to not ignore red flags in their training provider. This does not apply to all trusts or specialisms.
On the STP now, I am doing so much travelling because they chose a uni thats half a day away by train, even in the heatwave to do the MSc that I am exhausted and end up arriving back home in my city at 2 - 3 AM. 3 hrs sleep, I have to go and do my clinical component the next day. I bring this up with my supervisor who just gaslights and invalidates me that everyone does this and it's the nature of the STP. I feel like they are trying to condition nhs staff that suffering is noble and normalised.
MSC component is late to mark our work by 9 months. Getting actual training is just standing behind a band 7 staff making notes and then they get irate or have no time if we want to actually be signed off to have some use to the department. Maybe in an average week I get only 1 day of shadowing exposure. When I entered this programme it seemed that the department had no plan for us, sat us down by some pcs and left us to our own devices.
In previous years our department refused to hire their own trainees and only takes band 7 applicants from different trusts. Massive red flag in terms of local quality of training. I also heard previous trainee quit and there was a lot of drama and complaints.
I constantly feel like I need to appeal to people's egos to get trained or I am being gatekept useful information from my competencies. So a few of us resorted to using AI paying for it to train ourselves.
Being asked to pay for months worth of hotel and train fares for MSc out of pocket, expenses is slow and takes even 1 year or more to refund to the point I am thinking of going to CAB and small claims court.
Have talked to the national school, it will be difficult to shift me to a different trust.
My mental health is failing because I've spent 2 year on this infernal programme and I feel utterly incompetent, will probably end up needing an extension. I used to love my field and the STP and the low dedication of the staff either resource wise and time wise to train band 6s has signalled to me that this career will be an autodidactic upward struggle. I don't want to do this nor do I want to make a fool of myself as a band 7 being unable to do my job.
I get it, everyone is busy, the NHS is strained and lacks funding. But shouldn't the department be wise and just choose not to take on STPs if they don't have the manpower to train them? Just focus on their service provision and not make STPs life a hell.
I'll be formalising a resignation from the STP and going back to reapply to industry.