Programme Director - Daniel Weiand

Specialty Programme Coordinator - Joanne O'Brien

HR Officer - Allyson Ashwell

The purpose of these pages is to provide you with useful education and training information, which will assist you throughout your rotation.

Infectious Diseases provides the opportunity of a career ranging from challenging and constantly varied clinical management to intellectually stimulating frontier research into diseases of worldwide importance. The specialty has encompassed the requirements of a clearly objective based training curriculum and offers training programmes ranging from pure infectious diseases to combined training with general internal medicine or medical microbiology / medical virology.

Infectious diseases

Why choose Infectious Diseases?

Infectious Diseases offer unique opportunities not found in other specialties. At the end of training you could work in research, NHS, a rural hospital in Africa or for the World Health Organisation. It is the perfect specialty for anyone who wishes to do a job which is outside of the ordinary.

As a trainee what can I expect from my training programme?

The five year rotation in Infectious Diseases and General Medicine is currently split between the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle and James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough. Typically two years will be spent in each location. In addition one year of high intensity General Medicine may be spent with the Infectious Diseases physicians in North Tyneside or Friarage Hospital, Northallerton. Once core infection training is introduced, one of the five years will be spent doing Microbiology Laboratory Work and consult work.

Infectious Diseases in the North East provide excellent training opportunities in HIV, Viral Hepatitis, In-patient and Out-patient General Infectious Diseases and Out-patient Parenteral Antibiotic Therapy (OPAT). We have a dynamic group of consultant trainers who will ensure that the training meets the individual needs of trainees.

What our trainees say:

Infectious diseases (ID) is a fascinating specialty which leads the battle between clinician and micro-organism. The scope of ID is vast incorporating everything from community acquired infections such as pneumonia to rare infections from the tropics and everything in between.  In addition to acute infections there are additional challenges of managing patients with chronic diseases such as HIV.

As an ID physician you have to constantly adapt to evolving micro-organisms and their varied effects on human health. This may include managing patients in an influenza pandemic to treating multi-drug resistant TB.  This variety ensures a career in infectious diseases is never dull!

To find out more about our region and Trusts please visit the Find Your Place website.