Welcome to Geriatrics we hope you’ll enjoy your training with us and we’ve designed the following pages to help you settle in easily. We aim to provide useful information to potential future and current Geriatric Medicine Specialist Trainees, Geriatric Medicine Trainers and all others interested in the Geriatric Medicine training opportunities in Health Education England (NE). We hope you will find this website a useful resource.
Training Programme Director: Dr Ahmed Jaafar
School Manager: Steve Hamnett
Specialty Programme Coordinator: Joanne O'Brien
HR Officer, Lead Employer Trust Allyson Ashwell 0191 275 4753 / Christian Collins 0191 275 4783
Why choose Geriatric Medicine?
Geriatrics is one of the few remaining career pathways in General Medicine. Our patients have a diverse range of comorbidities and we provide holistic care of the older person working across specialties and within a multi-disciplinary team. There is a huge amount of variety and flexibility in our specialty, and opportunities for doctors to develop different subspecialty interests during their training. And we are hugely in demand!
As a trainee what can I expect from my training programme?
Trainees rotate each year in September (usually the first Monday). Every hospital on the rotation provides excellent training opportunities in all aspects of the Geriatric curriculum.
Hospitals on the rotation:
Newcastle, Carlisle, North Tyneside, Wansbeck, Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland, Darlington, Durham, South Tees and North Tees.
This is an excellent place to live and to train. Our trainees give excellent feedback informally and formally in the GMC Survey. Most trainees stay in the region to take up a consultant post. There are also excellent opportunities for research and teaching in our region.
What our trainees say:
I find this a challenging and rewarding specialty. The patients are often complex and can present in atypical ways, requiring lateral thinking. I particularly enjoy geriatric medicine as it offers a good mix of acute and chronic medical conditions and encompasses all specialties.
There is no typical day, which is the beauty of medicine. Every day is varied, challenging and interesting. The timetables vary from hospital to hospital. Currently my days have a good mix of clinics and ward work. For example a day may involve a ward round in the morning, a lunch time meeting in which we take turns to present interesting cases then there may be a clinic in the afternoon. As care of the elderly is such a varied specialty we undertake many different types of clinics such as falls, movement disorders and general medicine to name a few.
Current vacancy information (links to HEE website recruitment page)
To find out more about our region and Trusts please visit the Find Your Place website.