Welcome to Wessex! We hope you will enjoy your time with us.
About the deanery
The Wessex deanery covers a wide geographical area from Dorchester in the West to Portsmouth in the East, Basingstoke to the North, and Poole to the South.
Our Training Programme Director (TPD) is Dr Simon Crowther, who works at Poole Hospital in University Hospitals Dorset.
Our deputy TPDs are Dr Will Storrar, Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, and Dr Tom Brown, Queen Alexandra Hospital.
Our administrative contact is James Pillinger.
For deanery related queries e-mail medicine.wx@hee.nhs.uk – the inbox is then triaged to the respiratory team.
STC trainee representatives
The respiratory Specialty Training Committee (STC) has trainee representation. Your current representatives are Ellie Cox, Afaq Afridi, Henry Harcourt, and Georgie Courquin. We are also responsible for the running of the website and coordinating the training days. The inbox is monitored on a reasonably frequent basis but as the trainee representatives do this work in their own time, please do not expect rapid responses. If you have an urgent query, you should use the WhatsApp group and one of the pool of trainees will be able to help.
Please note – we do not get access to a list of trainees in the region, personal information, or details of your rotations. We do ask the deanery to send out a link to this website and our e-mail address, but if you’ve been missed off just e-mail us and we will add you mailing lists and the WhatsApp group.
Rotations
The four-year programme sees you rotate through both DGH and tertiary care centres. The deanery will e-mail in the early part of the calendar year to ask for your preferences for the upcoming rotations, and these will be considered together with your outstanding training requirements. Rotations are allocated on a six-monthly basis, although in most cases you will stay at the same hospital for the full 12 months. However, there are rare occasions (for example, trainees needing to rotate through specific hospitals who provide ICU training) where you may be asked to move after six months.
Our hospitals are:
- Dorset County Hospital (Dorchester)
- Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital/Royal Hampshire County Hospital (Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust)
- Poole Hospital/Royal Bournemouth Hospital (University Hospitals Dorset)
- Southampton General Hospital
- Queen Alexandra Hospital (Portsmouth)
- Salisbury District Hospital
Placements at Hampshire Hospitals or University Hospitals Dorset may be at either site.
Everyone must rotate through ICU at either Salisbury, Southampton, or Portsmouth. You will also be expected to gain experience in cystic fibrosis, pulmonary hypertension, and lung transplantation. More details on how to arrange this will be uploaded soon.
Training days
Throughout your time in Wessex you will be expected to run at least one of our respiratory training days. These happen monthly apart from August. We try and run two face-to-face per year (kindly sponsored by drug representatives) and the rest will be on Zoom. More information on this can be found here.
Ultrasound training
You will be encouraged to become ultrasound competent as early as possible so that you can get stuck in with pleural procedures – a large part of the respiratory registrar workload! The new ultrasound curriculum contains a nice flowchart on what you need for your logbook to get your sign off. You need to follow the pathway to gain Primary Operator status. The BTS training standards are linked here – the DOPS form is contained in the supplementary material.
ARCP
The deanery will e-mail you ahead of time to inform you of your ARCP. The panel usually meets twice a year. You will not be invited to attend but will receive feedback once the panel has issued your outcome. You can’t go far wrong if you follow what is on the ARCP decision aid which can be found on the JRCPTB website.
Out of programme
Emma Kinsella has done an amazing job compiling a list of out of programme opportunities around the region, and Henry is in the process of writing an excellent guide on the process of applying to go out of programme. Bear in mind that now the programme is four years long you won’t have a lot of time to decide, and OOP generally isn’t approved in your final year of training.
Other bits
Stepping up into the role of respiratory registrar role can feel like a big jump, but don’t forget you aren’t expected to know everything from day one. Ask questions and run through your patients during clinic lists. Ellie is writing a set of clinic crib sheets which you may find helpful to guide you through the more specialist clinics and remind you of the essential questions, investigations, and treatments required.
You’ll need to keep a logbook of respiratory procedures, outpatient clinics, etc. Ellie’s template can be found below. A clinic can be counted if it lasts at least two hours – there are no minimum number of patients you need to have seen. It is good practice to keep an eye out for the results of your biopsies, EBUS outcomes etc.
Finally, don’t neglect your GIM curriculum (even though 1/3 of the front door presentations will be respiratory related!). Keep an eye out for the GIM training days as you’ll need to have evidence of 100 hours of GIM study leave when you get to the end. You can also attend GIM conferences such as those delivered by the RCP and AGM. If you are an RCP member, the Clinical Medicine journal has some excellent CPD articles you can read and enter as reflections on your ePortfolio.
Wessex Respiratory 