Welcome to the East of England Foundation Programme!

Thank you for looking at our web pages. Hopefully the information is clear, and you can find answers for any of your queries that are locally based!

For national FAQ, the UKFPO Rough Guide and Curriculum should answer most of your questions. You can also refer to the GMC website for guidance on registration, the UKFPO website or in their FAQ section for information on national policy and the medical careers website for careers advice. If you have questions that are specific to your personal situation and which are not answered on this page, they may be in  our trainee hub pages, or then you should ask your FTPD in the first instance.

These pages are specific to NHSE EoE and our two foundation schools: East Anglia Foundation Schools (EAFS) and Essex, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire (EBH).

Our Trusts

EAFS - EAFS has ten Trusts under its remit and is split into 2 regions EAFS East and EAFS West.

EBH - EBH foundation school has eight acute NHS Trusts under its remit and is split into 2 regions EBH East and EBH West.  

Meet the team

East of England Foundation School Director:

The Deputy Dean supporting Foundation, is Dr Helen Johnson, the previous Foundation School Director.

Dr Helen Johnson

Foundation Faculty

We liaise with the national group, other schools and supports within the deanery, the foundation training programme directors and medical education managers to set policy and guidance for foundation. We are part of various national groups looking to set the shape of training and best practice. We support trainees with difficulties, oversee recruitment and assessment, quality assurance and the education and training within trusts, and look to provide innovation and improve the benefit of training in foundation for you. We make the call on difficult decisions.

We have a number of team members from administration, recruitment, assessment, programmes and faculty support who work tirelessly to help keep the backbone function of Foundation, as well as the other schools, running smoothly. Their contacts are below. The Programme Management Team answer all the queries around rotations and programmes, and should be notified of sickness, maternity and all LTFT, TOFP and IFST requests. The Assessment Team answer all the queries around ARCP, and the Faculty Support Team are involved with the Hub Events, wider programme issues and trainee representatives.

The wider team

The interface between the deanery and you is your local trust education team. This is led in foundation by your FTPD and the Medical Education Manager [MEM]. They organise local teaching and training, review their local rotations and troubleshoot for you, as well as liaise with your Education and Clinical Supervisors. We meet them at central teaching, training and business meetings, as well as when we drop in on trusts. They look at our ideas and aspirations and help hone them into workable advances for you.

What do we do?

We have three key themes we focus on each year: 

1. The first of our three key themes for foundation training in the East of England is Excellence in Education. We are aspiring to create a focussed, delivered educational programme of 60 mandatory hours per year for each trainee that covers the curriculum and is also inspiring. Look at our education page to find out more.
2. We wish for trustworthy training rotations for our foundation doctors. We review the GMC survey and information we get from our Foundation training programme directors [ FTPD] , visits and trainee reps to provide suitable balanced rotations and provide quality training. Our hospitals can sometimes be hard pressed, and in those instances we work with them to provide solutions that maintain training and education. We aren't perfect, but we are aspiring to be better. Sometimes the best, and most innovative, solutions come from trainees themselves and we can help you with implementation. Our FTPD in each trust are there for your assistance.
3. Our final strand is in personalising support. Becoming a doctor can be tough, and we want to do everything we can to help this go smoothly. We have an F2 to F1 mentorship programme, to support that step from medical student to doctor; resilience training workshops, careers and professional workshops. We are supportive of those requiring Less than Full Time Training [LTFTT] and if required time out of training or Inter-Foundation school transfers. We  also have an excellent professional support unit for those that need a little more. The deanery trainee wellbeing hub describes many of the opportunities for you. We are looking to see what else would be helpful and useful. All ideas are considered! Either talk to your foundation representatives or FTPD about taking forwards good ideas.

Trainee Representatives

Trainee representation is a key element in the development and monitoring of the Foundation Programme and representatives play a valuable role in providing feedback and helping shape new initiatives. We have trainee reps from across the schools and from both academic and standard training programmes. Please talk to them, feedback and give ideas through them. They are given advance access to guidelines in draft to consider the trainee view.

As a trainee representative, you are mandated to attend FDAB  - the Foundation Doctors Advisory Board - which develops policies and feeds back nationally, as well as local meetings with the FSD.

Please see the Trainee Representative Role document for further information.