The twelve months attachment in General Practice is broken into two sections. The first four months occurs at the beginning of the three-year course and is intended as an introduction to General Practice. This starts in October and finishes at the end of January. The GP Registrar begins work in General Practice with close supervision, involving sitting in with the trainer during surgeries and carrying out home visits. During this period the GP Registrar is introduced to all the mechanics of General Practice and meets all members of the practice team. Towards the end of the four months he/she will be conducting surgeries, carrying out home visits and doing 'on-call' work under supervision from his/her trainer.

The second period of General Practice has been extended to eight months, and occurs at the end of the course, from February to the end of September. Here the GP Registrar will gradually take on equal duties to the partners, although again working closely alongside his/her trainer with all the facilities for close co-operation and discussion. All GP registrars entering the programme are required to undertake the nMRCGP examination (see Assessment).

A further important component of GPR training during the GP attachments is out of hours care work. The scheme has linked up with the local out of hours care provider (Cumbria Health on Call) "CHOC" to provide a comprehensive package of competency-based training in out of hours care. This comprises a 5 day modular teaching programme, as well as the requirement to undertake supervised shifts for CHOC.

Throughout their General Practice attachment the GP Registrar will take part in at least twice-weekly regular one-to-one tutorial discussions.

Although there is no rigid rule we encourage GP registrars to spend the whole of their General Practice attachment in one practice. We do give the final year group the possibility of swapping practices for short periods (one or two weeks): - this provides GP registrars with the opportunity of switching between urban and rural practices for example. In addition, the GPRs integrated training post will be based in a different training practice within the scheme.

Updated by TS on 24/08/2011