Welcome
Integrated academic training programmes ensure trainees have protected time to pursue a research interest and acquire research skills in parallel with your clinical training. Routes of entry into an academic training programme include the Academic Foundation Programme (AFP), Academic Clinical Fellowship (ACF) and Clinical Lectureship (CL) which is can be funded locally or by National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). These are clinical specialty training posts that incorporates academic training programmes in host academic institution, in partnership with local NHS organisations and Trusts and is aimed at doctors who are considering a career path in clinical academic medicine.
Academic Foundation Doctors (AFD) follow the same curriculum to attain the same outcomes as other foundation doctors but in addition, undertake academic research.
Academic Clinical Fellows (ACF) can be appointed at ST1, ST2 or ST3 level and is for a maximum of 3 years. The trainee combines clinical and academic training, which is geared towards applying for PhD fellowship. ACFs spend 75% of their time in clinical training and 25% of their time in academic research.
Clinical Lecturers (CL) spend 50% of their time in clinical training and 50% on academic research. This is funded for up to 4 years and the trainee must hold a PhD.
Full details of available ACF posts, application deadlines and interviews can be found here or via Oriel.
Aims of Academic Training 
AFDs learn how to formulate a research question, review the literature and write a research proposal as well as gain experience of patient recruitment, data collection and case record form completion according to good clinical practice, as well as presentation skills and report/manuscript writing.
ACFs obtain training in specific clinical and relevant research methods including study design, quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, and interpretation of research findings.
ACFs develop and submit a research proposal for an externally funded research training fellowship in national competition, applying to relevant funding bodies.