• Introduction
• Purpose of the Foundation Programme
• Progression through Foundation Training
• How to use the Curriculum in the Workplace
• Resources: foundation doctors
• Resources: trainers, supervisors and placement supervision group
• The educational framework and recognising learning styles
• Educational framework
• Educational culture and practice
• How to use the Syllabus
• Learning and teaching
• Supervised learning events (SLEs)
• Assessment
• Syllabus
• Bibliography
• Appendices
• Download

Purpose of the foundation programme

The foundation programme is part of the continuum of medical education. It is the only point in medical training common to all UK medical students and doctors. It ensures that newly qualified doctors demonstrate their ability to learn in the workplace, develop their clinical and professional skills in the workplace in readiness for core, specialty or general practice training.

The foundation programme aims to ensure that all doctors deliver safe and effective patient care and aspire to excellence in their professional development in accordance with the General Medical Council (GMC) guidance laid down in 'Tomorrow's Doctors' (2009), 'Promoting Excellence: Standards for medical education and training' (July 2015) and 'Good Medical Practice' (2013).

During the programme, foundation doctors work in a supportive environment where they are properly managed and supervised, enabling them to learn through service delivery whilst ensuring that patients are not put at risk. Foundation doctors practise within their own level of competence and are provided with adequate supervision and feedback to reach higher levels of competence in existing skills and to acquire new skills. The foundation programme builds on and develops the responsibilities of clinical professionalism. Satisfactory progress through the foundation programme indicates that a doctor is moving towards increasing maturity of practice.

Throughout medical school and the foundation programme, medical students and foundation doctors should draw upon career information and guidance and reflect upon their abilities, interests and opportunities as well as anticipated service needs to make informed choices about their future career. The career management section in the reference guide and healthcare careers are useful resources.

The foundation programme aims to:

• Build on undergraduate education by instilling recently graduated doctors with the attributes of professionalism and the primacy of patient welfare, which are required for safe and effective care of patients with both acute and long-term conditions.
• Provide generic training that ensures that foundation doctors develop and demonstrate a range of essential interpersonal and clinical skills for managing patients with both acute and long-term conditions, regardless of their specialty.
• Provide the opportunity to develop leadership, team working and supervisory skills in order to deliver care in the setting of a contemporary multidisciplinary team and to begin to make independent clinical decisions with appropriate support.
• Provide foundation doctors with a variety of hospital, community and academic workplace experience during their foundation programme in order to inform career choice. All foundation doctors must have opportunities to understand community care provision and by 2017, every foundation trainee will have a community placement; 45% of trainees will have a placement in psychiatry and 5% will be in academic programmes.