Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is the largest specialist cardiothoracic hospital in the UK and includes the country’s main heart and lung transplant centre. The hospital treats over 24,000 patients and sees nearly 74,000 outpatients each year from across the UK.  Its services are internationally recognized and include Non-invasive Diagnostic and interventional cardiology, electrophysiology, implantable devices, respiratory medicine including oncology, pulmonary vascular disease, cystic fibrosis, complex lung infection, interstitial lung disease and domiciliary ventilatory support and sleep medicine and cardiac and thoracic surgery, including heart & lung transplantation.  Our patients travel long distances to see us, confident in the knowledge that we are at the forefront of providing new and innovative treatments for heart and lung patients.

We are currently located in Cambridgeshire in the East of England.  In April 2018 we will open the state-of-the-art new purpose built Papworth Hospital on the world-class Cambridge Biomedical Campus.  This opens up numerous opportunities for the hospital to continue its pursuit of innovative cardiothoracic treatments through research and education.

Papworth Hospital is associated with East Anglian Foundation School offering excellent foundation year 1 & 2 on 4 monthly placements.  At any one time we have approximately 6 FY1’s and 10 FY2’s on placement.  This means our dedicated education department ensures a high standard of teaching that is adaptable to the needs of the trainees.  We are very privileged and unique to have a multi-disciplinary clinical education team that work very closely with the trainees, clinical and educational supervisors to provide a valuable and supportive placement.     

We have a huge range of educational opportunities from curriculum based study days that are mandatory for foundation doctors, through to daily lunch time teaching sessions for the first 3 weeks of your placements.  These are delivered by the experts themselves.  We have a simulation lab where the trainees are able to practice clinical skills in a safe environment.    In addition there is specific departmental teaching in all areas.  There are monthly hospital wide Grand Rounds, clinical audit sessions, Critical Care Conferences, MDT meetings, and regular bedside teaching.  We have close undergraduate links with the University of Cambridge school of Clinical Medicine and have medical students on-site.  There is a well-resourced 24 hour accessible on-site library, plus electronic access to many journals and books.    

Being a specialised hospital means there are opportunities for trainees to experience and be part of services, procedures and care not available in many other UK hospitals.  Most of our services are consultant led hence trainees will get some very specialist experience.   However our aim is to help trainee achieve the competences that they require at their current stage of training. We also offer career guidance and assistant with application and recruitment process to speciality training in the UK.    

We are proud of our open door, transparent and supportive educational culture where training needs can be personalised to individual requirements where possible.  A regular junior doctors’ forum provides a formal mechanism for feedback to ensure the teaching, training and educational needs are meet.  We have a ‘trainee say, we listen and act’ concept to provide the best training experience.  Many of our foundation doctors come back to us later in their training career as Papworth provides a very valuable training package.  For more information please feel free to contact the Clinical Education Team or Dr Helen Barker, Foundation Training Programme Director at Papworth.