Starting Your Career as a GP in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough

Last updated Tuesday 20th July 2021

Below you’ll find some useful background information and helpful hints and tips to help you start your GP career in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough. If you’re looking for something that’s not listed please contact us at candptraininghub@nhs.net

C&P Practices

Click the image to open an interactive map of practices in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough.

Click on the + sign to read the content:

With over 90 GP practices now working in 21 Primary Care Networks, we have diverse patient populations, a talented and passionate workforce and a drive to deliver quality primary care at scale.

Our practices range in size from smaller family practices to large super practices, and we serve over one million patients from a mix of urban centres and rural communities across our 3 localities – Peterborough, Huntingdon & Fenland and Cambridge. This means plenty of opportunities to develop the skills and experience you need in a range of settings. We have big ambitions and we’d love you to be part of our future.

  • Excellent employment opportunities for newly qualified GPs and Nurses
  • Wide variety of options for flexible working and a portfolio GP career
  • General Practice Fellowship to help you transition to practice and develop your career
  • A forward-thinking Training Hub providing high quality learning
  • Cosmopolitan cities, busy market towns, idyllic villages and beautiful countryside
  • Affordable housing, excellent schools and a really strong sense of community
  • Plenty of sports and leisure facilities and quality eating, drinking and shopping
  • Excellent local and national transport links providing easy access to regional hubs, London and the rest of the UK

Our region offers a hard-to-beat combination of culture and heritage, scientific and cutting-edge technology, world-class educational institutions and progressive development.

Peterborough is an ambitious and rapidly growing but still affordable city of around 200,000 residents. There’s a wide choice of homes and leisure activities including an extensive network of urban and rural cycleways to get you out and about. Although rich in heritage, modern Peterborough is a vibrant melting pot of cultures, currently thriving with major programmes of retail, leisure, housing and business development plus a new university in the works.

Famed for it’s history and internationally renowned university, Cambridge is frequently ranked in the top best cities to live in the UK. At the heart of the high tech Silicon Fen, it has become a major centre for technology and medical research. Go punting along the River Cam, join a walking tour of the city or explore the narrow winding streets and green spaces from the seat of a bicycle. There’s also world-class shopping with The Grand Arcade and an abundance of
independent and speciality shops.

Further afield, medieval Ely with its magnificent cathedral is a popular and pretty riverside city that retains the friendly feel of a market town and has rapidly become one of the region’s most sought after locations. It combines stunning architecture and spectacular countryside with new housing development and good road and rail links to Cambridge and London.

Nestled between Peterborough and Cambridge, rural Fenland is renowned for it’s wildlife, quiet cyclist-friendly roads and extensive network of rivers for lazing about on. Historic Huntingdon is home to charming churches, markets, cafés, bars and restaurants. Nearby attractions include Huntingdon Racecourse and Grafham Water Centre for a wide range of outdoor activities.

We know you want to work in a supportive environment, with people who share your values and who want to work together to make a difference to the lives and health of the local community. Finding the right fit takes careful research so we’ve put together our top hints and tips to help you with your search. You can also contact the Training Hub if you have any questions or want more advice.

 

EXPLORE
The practice website – details on staff, team composition, access model, practice ethos and contact details should all be available.

READ
The last CQC report – don’t be put off by “requires improvement” – aim to understand the issues as identified by inspectors and explore the practice’s response to the most recent report.

REVIEW
– Practice patient questionnaires at: www.gp-patient.co.uk/compare
– Practice demographics and public health comparison metrics at: www.fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/general-practice/
(As always, care should be taken with interpreting the data and understanding what this means in context.)

REQUEST
A copy of a proposed job plan, a standard day, and a copy of the practice standard contract before you visit.

VISIT
Aim to schedule your visit for a coffee break to meet the team on a ‘normal’ working day. It is reasonable to ask to see a clinic list from a similar role from the last week or two, to give you a feel for workload and team communication.

JOB PLAN
  1. If the job description contains flexible sessions, what are they likely to entail?
  2. How many sessions are there and what are the expectations in relation to their use?
  3. If the post is on split sites, ask questions about how that would work for you.
  4. Is the proposed job plan a long-term one? How is it likely to change after 1 year? 5 years?
  5. Ask about special interests and how they fit within the job plan.
  6. If you have interests which do not feature in the job plan, will there be opportunities to develop an involvement in those?
  7. Nature of on calls.
  8. Ask whether the practice has already signed up to participate in the GP Fellowship Scheme.

TEACHING

  1. Ask about the links between the medical school and the practice.
  2. Ask about the practice’s involvement with GP trainees and expectations with regard to your own responsibilities.
  3. What about the opportunity to become a clinical supervisor (associate trainer) or educational supervisor (trainer)?
  4. Are there particular areas which they feel would need to be filled by the new recruit?

RESEARCH

  1. Is the practice involved with the CRN?
  2. Are there opportunities or expectations to be involved with research work?

MANAGEMENT

  1. What are the opportunities to develop an involvement in management within the practice?
  2. Are there opportunities for an involvement at regional level (e.g. networks)?
  3. What are the immediate needs for service improvement and service development within the practice

PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES

It is sometimes worth raising problematic issues at this stage as the response you get may influence your decision to apply for the job or not. Issues might include:

  1. Job sharing
  2. If the job is part-time, whether there may be opportunities to make it full time later on
  3. If you lack experience in one area but you know that you can gain that experience quickly if given a minimum of support, would this cause an issue for the practice?
  4. If you have developed a lot of experience in an area of interest which is not immediately relevant to the job, will your experience be of use at some point in the future?

GP Induction Pack

Our new GP Induction Pack is full of useful resources! You'll find invaluable information and links to local and national advice, resources, support and communities to help new GPs into practice in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough.

Download