About Us

The Caversham

We have been an established teaching and training practice for many years and are involved in teaching both undergraduate students and qualified doctors. We have a full complement of attached staff including district nurses, health visitors, community psychiatric nurses, midwives and social workers. We have created a leaflet giving you a guide to our current staff. We are also fortunate enough to have a wide variety of visiting consultants providing us with outreach specialist clinics in fields such as ophthalmology, gynaecology, rheumatology and psychology. These clinics enable us to provide conveniant and rapid access to specialst NHS services – without the need to travel to hospital.

@the_cavershamGP


Training & Teaching

The practice is regularly involved in teaching medical students, mostly from The Royal Free and University College Hospital Medical School. They are able to learn a great deal by sitting in on consultations and by accompanying doctors and other team members on visits. You may be asked if a medical student can ask you some questions prior to your consultation with the GP. This is an extremely useful learning and teaching experience for the Student. Most of our medical students are in the fourth year of their training although we do occasionally have medical students from other years of their course.

Your permission will always be asked if a medical student is to be present during your consultation. You are of course free to decline and doing so would not affect the care that you get in any way. As well as teaching undergraduate medical students, The Caversham Practice also participates in the education and training of more senior doctors. All of the Partners in the practice are GP trainers and participate in the training of GP Registrars. A GP registrar is a qualified doctor who has decided that he/she would like to pursue a career in General Practice. GP Training currently takes approximately 3 years and involves a rotation through various hospital based specialties as well as a period of approximately one year in a training practice where the doctor can work as a GP in a training environment. Both GP Registrars and GP Trainers are occasionally asked to video their consultations in order to improve aspects of their consultation technique. You will always be asked in advance if your consultation is scheduled to be recorded and are free to decline if you would find this off-putting.

Recently qualified doctors in the foundation years of their training are also sometimes offered the opportunity to spend some time (usually four months) working as a GP as part of a rotation between different posts. These so called foundation year doctors (FY2 doctors) have so far proved to be enthusiastic and invaluable colleagues. We hope we have managed to persuade some of them of the merits of a career in General Practice.