🌐 Web Resources

⚡ Quick Summary

Rushing to a tutorial? Preparing for your ESR? Start here. This box is your entire ST1/ST2 GP post in a nutshell.

The ST1 & ST2 GP post training map — your visual overview of the whole placement

🎯 Why This Matters in GP Training

ST1 and ST2 feel like the "early" years — but the habits, systems, and mindset you build now follow you all the way to CCT and beyond.

📘 Training Structure & the RCGP 2025 Curriculum

How your working week is structured, how your appointment times should progress, and what changed in the August 2025 curriculum update — all in one place.

📋 WPBA Quick Reference

At a glance: which assessments, how many, and in which setting. Verify the latest numbers at rcgp.org.uk/mrcgp-exams/wpba — this is your responsibility, not your trainer's.

🏛 The Four Pillars of Your GP Post

Every part of your job as a GP — clinical and non-clinical — sits within these four domains. They are the framework your Placement Planning Meeting uses. Understand them before you sit down with your trainer.

🗓 The Three Training Phases

Your 6-month GP post is divided into three actionable phases. Each phase has clear priorities. Click each phase to see exactly what to focus on and why.

🏥 Maximising GP Learning in Hospital Posts

Every hospital post is a GP post in disguise — if you look at it the right way. The question to ask after every ward round: "What would this patient have looked like in a GP consultation six months ago?"

Click a specialty to see the key GP learning points, AKT tips, and ePortfolio strategy:

🩺 GP Action Framework

This is the practical heart of your early GP placement. What does "safe, good enough for ST1" actually look like — and how do you operate safely every single day? Here is the framework that experienced trainers actually use to judge early performance.

🚨 Red Flags & Safety

The presentations you must not miss in general practice. Organised by system so you can scan fast and act faster.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

These are the mistakes that repeatedly catch trainees out — in their GP posts, their ePortfolios, and their ARCP reviews. Read them once. Remember them always.

🗣 Starter Consultation Phrases

Natural, adaptable phrases drawn from consultation skills literature and UK GP training resources. Memorise the principle, not a script — then adapt to your own voice and the patient in front of you.

💡 Insider Pearls

These are the insights that experienced trainees and trainers wish someone had told them at the start. Not in any guideline. Not in the RCGP curriculum. But true.

• 🔑
  Your log entries are your only voice at ARCP. When a panel of people who have never met you sit down to decide whether you progress, they hear your voice through your log entries. Make sure it sounds like a thoughtful, reflective, developing doctor — not a box-ticker writing summaries of clinic.
• ⏳
  The first three months feel hard — and that is completely normal. Moving from hospital medicine to general practice is a bigger culture shift than most trainees expect. The undifferentiated presentations, the brevity of consultations, the isolation of decision-making — all of it is genuinely challenging. You will adapt. Everyone does. Give yourself permission to find it difficult without concluding that you are failing.
• 🎯
  Quality beats quantity in WPBAs. A few deeply reflected, well-discussed assessments are more valuable than a dozen that were rushed through just to tick the box. Your Educational Supervisor can tell the difference instantly.
• 📱
  Use FourteenFish as a reflection tool — not just an assessment repository. The trainees who engage most meaningfully with the ePortfolio often say it becomes genuinely useful for their own development — a place where they process what they are learning and track how they are growing. If it feels purely like bureaucracy, something is wrong with how you are using it.
• 🗣️
  The consultation gets faster as you get better at it. In the early weeks, a 15-minute slot can feel like trying to run a marathon in a corridor. As your consultation skills develop — through reading, reflection, and practice — the same slot begins to feel spacious. The skill is in efficiency of communication, not rushing through clinical content.
• 🩺
  Get to know the whole team — including the "non-clinical" staff. The receptionist who knows which patients are likely to be difficult. The HCA who notices something unusual about a patient's appearance. The practice pharmacist who catches your prescribing error. These people are clinical assets, and building genuine relationships with them makes you a safer and more effective doctor.
• 🌍
  If you trained abroad, the NHS hierarchy is flatter than you might expect. In UK general practice, GPs treat all colleagues — clinical and non-clinical — as equals within their domains of expertise. The expectation is mutual respect, not hierarchy. This is not just cultural guidance — it is assessed in your MSF.
• 📈
  Your PDP should reflect what actually needs developing — not what sounds impressive. A SMART PDP goal of "improve my knowledge of contraception by attending a family planning course by March" is far more powerful than "develop as a clinician." The former is achievable and shows self-awareness. The latter is vague and tells your Educational Supervisor nothing useful.
• 😤
  It is okay to debrief difficult consultations. Some consultations leave you unsettled — a complaint, a missed diagnosis, an angry patient, an unexpected death. These are the highest-value log entries. Processing them through the ISCE structure, discussing them with your trainer, and finding the learning in them is exactly what professional development looks like at its best.
• 🔎
  PUNs and DENs — your personal AKT revision list. After each surgery, note 1–2 things you didn't know (Patient Unmet Needs / Doctor Educational Needs). These map directly to your AKT knowledge gaps and make powerful WPBA log entries. The trainees who do this routinely arrive at the AKT with far fewer surprises.
• 📱
  Use NICE CKS after every wrong AKT practice question. For each question you get wrong on Passmed or similar, go directly to the relevant NICE CKS page. This builds clinical knowledge in clinical context — not as isolated facts. It is substantially more effective than re-reading the question explanation alone.
• 📊
  AKT statistics: repeat the admin/stats section three times. Written knowledge for statistics cements faster with repetition than clinical topics. Trainees who maximise the statistics and organisation domains (20% of the AKT combined) consistently outperform those who focus only on clinical content.
• 🎭
  SCA preparation: practise with multiple different people. Your usual study partner knows your consulting style and adapts to it. Varied consultation partners — who challenge you with unexpected responses, tears, or anger — build the adaptability that the real exam requires. This is one of the most commonly reported differences between those who pass first time and those who don't.
• ⏱
  Train with 8-minute SCA consultations. Practising with an 8-minute constraint trains pace and forces ruthless prioritisation. When you return to the real 12-minute exam, it feels spacious rather than pressured. The management plan stops getting squeezed out.
• 🩺
  In the SCA: make decisions. GPs make decisions based on probability even when uncertain. Examiners are specifically frustrated by trainees who gather a great deal of information and then refuse to commit to a plan. "I think this is most likely X, but I want to check Y" is confident and safe. "I'm not sure — we'll need more tests" without a working hypothesis is not.
• 👂
  Real listening scores more than model phrases. Genuinely pausing after the patient speaks, reflecting their words back, and responding to what has actually been said scores more Relating to Others marks than any perfectly executed ICE formula. Examiners have seen every phrase in every consultation skills book. They have not seen everyone use them with genuine attention.
• 📁
  The trainees who struggle at ARCP are rarely those who lacked effort. They are those whose evidence was scattered, unmapped, or produced in a last-minute panic. A portfolio full of well-reflected, capability-mapped entries from fortnightly habit beats a portfolio crammed with rushed entries in the week before the review panel — every time. Build the habit now.
• 🔁
  Early GP difficulty is often less about medicine and more about NHS systems literacy. EMIS, Docman, Accurx, local referral pathways, prescribing rules, follow-up arrangements, and community team boundaries — none of these are taught in medical school. The fastest way to learn them is not to ask the same question twice. Write it down, learn it once, and build your own local reference.

🎓 Trainer & Teaching Pearls

Guidance for GP trainers and TPDs — common blind spots, high-yield tutorial ideas, reflective questions for both GP and hospital posts, and three ready-to-use teaching cases.

🎭 Teaching Case Scenarios

Three ready-to-use tutorial cases covering AKT-style clinical reasoning, SCA consultation skills, and medico-legal decision-making. Use these as discussion starters or written exercises.

🧠 Memory Frameworks & Mnemonics

The frameworks that make clinical knowledge stick and consultation skills automatic. Learn the structure — the content follows.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

The questions trainees actually ask — answered directly, without the bureaucratic run-around.

🏁 Final Take-Home Points

If you only remember ten things from this page, let them be these.