At UHDB, we believe in investing in our future workforce and have spent a lot of time developing our training programmes to maximise the opportunities that we provide for our trainees. All programmes that we offer are clinically focussed, with an emphasis on developing knowledge and skills throughout.
For the 2025 intake of pharmacist foundation trainees, the Pharmacy department will be taking seven full year trainee pharmacists (six based at the Royal Derby Hospital, one at Queen's Hospital Burton), alongside four multi-sector training programmes (two at Derby and two at Burton) that are joint hosted with community pharmacies Dean and Smedley >, Peak Pharmacy > and Evans Pharmacy >.
We offer our revolutionary "5-6-7" automatic progression programme for our full year trainees, and trainees who are based at UHDB for 6 months or longer. Trainees on the 5-6-7 Programme are employed on a permanent, rather than temporary basis, and provided they progress through their foundation programme satisfactorily and meet key criteria, they will automatically move onto a band 6 pharmacist post when they register, and then can continue on the programme until band 7.
This has enormous benefits for both the trainee and the Trust. It gives the trainee the security at the outset that they are valued and that they have their next job ready and waiting for them. Automatic progression also avoids the trainees having to go through multiple recruitment processes at a critical time in their training year which could otherwise be stressful. For ourselves at the Trust it means we can retain the highly skilled staff that we have invested in.
We are in the process of developing a comprehensive prescribing training plan for our trainees, which will be tested with the 2024-2025 foundation trainees ready for use for 2025-2026. This will include access to an onsite designated prescribing practitioner for each trainee, and opportunities to spend prescribing practice hours with medical, pharmacist, and other non-medical prescribers.
All programmes are aligned to the GPhC Standards for the initial education and training of pharmacists and the registration assessment framework. Regular clinical seminars are held for all trainees at our RDH site, usually delivered by our specialist pharmacists. Directed study-time is also provided, which sits alongside clinical experience in a variety of rotations.
Rotations include:
- Clinical specialities (ward based rotations & tutorials)
- Medicine - including cardiology & coronary care, respiratory, gastrointestinal, liver, renal, care of the frail elderly
- Surgery - including trauma & orthopaedics, bariatric surgery, vascular surgery, ear nose and throat and maxillofacial
- Paediatrics - including paediatric high dependency and neonatal intensive care
- Obstetrics and gynaecology
- Critical care
- Oncology and haematology wards and day-case unit
- Medicines Information: all trainees learn to answer enquiries independently.
- Logistics: a short rotation to increase understanding of the provision of drugs to clinical areas
- Dispensary, including inpatients, outpatients, discharges and specialist chemotherapy areas
- Aseptic production
- Cross sector experience - 2 week placements in community are available for those who do not have a 3 or 6 month multi-sector rotation.
Download Royal Derby Hospital Sample Timetable [pdf] 490KB
Applications should be made by visiting the Oriel website >.
