Yeovil District Hospital
Yeovil District Hospital, Higher Kingston, Yeovil, Somerset BA21 4AT / Tel 01935 475122
Yeovil District Hospital employs over 1,850 staff with roughly 68% being clinical. It provides acute care for a population of about 180,000, mostly in South Somerset, North and West Dorset, and parts of Mendip, and has 345 beds.
Each year more than 30,000 patients are admitted as inpatients or day cases; more than 90,000 people attend outpatient appointments; around 40,000 people are treated in Accident and Emergency; and some 1,500 babies are born in the Maternity Unit.
Surrounding Area
Yeovil is in a beautiful location, surrounded by some of the UK’s most picturesque countryside – from Exmoor and the South Coast to the Mendips and Salisbury Plain. Yeovil also enjoys excellent transport networks, with easy access to London Paddington from Castle Cary, regional airports at Bristol, Exeter and Bournemouth, and cross-Channel ferry services from Poole, Portsmouth and Plymouth.
The Department
The Anaesthetic Department is located on Level 5 of the main hospital adjacent to main theatres and the ITU. The department, one of the largest in the hospital, plays a key role in supporting many of the hospital activities.
The department is staffed by 18 consultants, 2 associate specialists, 14 middle grades, 5 anaesthetic trainees and an F1 doctor.
Our office, though small in size, is large in activity and friendliness. We consider that there is more to life than work and many of us have outside interests ranging from windsurfing, mountain biking and sailing to choral singing. Family life is important and we have frequent social activities during the year.
The Work
A major commitment is providing an anaesthetic service to the theatres throughout the hospital. These include the 4 main theatres, 2 day theatres, and the gynae and maternity theatres in the Womens Hospital. In addition, anaesthetic cover is provided as needed for radiological studies (CT scanner and endoscopy).
At present, all medical staffing for the ITU is provided by the anaesthetic department both at junior and consultant level. Cover is provided 24 hours a day with daily consultant ward rounds. The ITU has recently been refurbished and has state-of-the-art equipment. Our Intensivists are experienced and enthusiastic teachers and you will get plenty of chances to perform practical procedures.
The department provides an on-demand epidural service and an anaesthetic service for caesarean sections and other obstetric interventions 24 hours a day.
As a brand new CT1 just starting out in Anaesthesia, you need to have a good grounding in the basics. We specialise in training and we aim to give our trainees the best start in their careers as possible. You will have plenty of exposure to all the “bread and butter” type anaesthesia (orthopaedics, gynae, day cases, general surgery) and get some experience later in the year in obstetrics and paediatrics, as well as peripheral nerve blocks and regional techniques. The majority of your lists will be with a consultant, however for those who want to stretch their wings a bit, we give the opportunity to run lists on your own- depending on your experience and with plenty of support. CT2s will be given more independence with solo lists as appropriate and will have the opportunity to learn regional/peripheral nerve blocks and take part in the Obstetrics on-call rota.
We believe that it is important for trainees to gain experience from being on call, however the benefits of this are far less after 9pm so none of our novice CT1s initially do solo overnight on calls. This means that all your WTD limited hours are spent doing useful things like learning how to anaesthetise. Once deemed competent and confident (and when you feel ready), you will do a week of nights (Monday- Thursday) on call once every 6 weeks and weekends (daytime) once every month.
Educational Experience
We run weekly tutorials which follow the curriculum, with modules covering the basics of anaesthesia, Intensive Care Medicine, basic sciences, and an introduction to obstetrics and paediatrics. There are regular sessions dedicated to exam practice with MCQs and vivas and trainees are encouraged to present the tutorial subjects themselves- as teaching is the quickest way to learn. Teaching draws heavily on the e-LA syllabus with extensive use of modern interactive teaching methods.
With just 4 trainees you can be guaranteed personal attention with an active programme designed to ensure that your WPBA are completed at appropriate times and that the educational opportunity from these are maximized. The consultants in the Department are keen and enthusiastic teachers and you will be able to select you own mentor who will support you during your stay here.
Trainee feedback is consistently good, with recent trainees rating their induction, the tutorial programme, support, theatre teaching, and quality of training as “Good” or “Excellent”. Over 80% of our consultants were rated as “excellent” for training.
Bristol School of Anaesthesia, Yeovil District Hospital
Jo Kerr, ACCS - Head of School
Contact Details
Anaesthetic Dept: 01935 384246
Secretary: Carole Paull
College Tutor: Dr Jeremy Reid