Role of the GP Trainer

The GP Trainer's role includes two main activities - Educational Supervisor and Clinical Supervisor.

Educational Supervision 

Each GP trainee will have a named Educational Supervisor (ES) for the entire duration of their training programme. This is usually their trainer in the final placement of their rotation and is allocated at the beginning of their first rotation. Once nominated, we ask that the ES remains unchanged for the duration of that trainee's rotation in order to ensure continuity and consistency of supervision. The role of the ES is to continuously monitor the performance of the trainee over their training rotation and provide feedback; pastoral and clinical advice. The ES should meet with the trainee at least once every six months (although we recommend more often than this) and must complete an Educational Supervisors Report (ESR) towards the end of each 6-month training period. The ES should read the trainee's ePortfolio log diary entries regularly and make appropriate comments in the diary to help the trainee progress. They should also validate the log diary entries against any of the RCGP competences demonstrated by the trainee.

GP trainers are entitled to receive payment for educational supervision of trainees in hospital posts or when supervising a trainee in another practice (ST1 and ST2). To minimise claims we have agreed to combining educational into an enhancement to the trainers grant in ST2 and ST3.  In effect the reward to the practice does not manifest until the trainee is in a GP post. We expect the ST3 practice to provide educational supervision over all 3 years. 

The trainers grant is paid to a trainer directly supervising a GP registrar in ST2 or ST3. The enhancement covers both CPD and educational supervision for trainees supervised in ST1 and ST2 in hospital posts or another practice. Currently the trainers grant is £8,584.00. All payments are made to the practice by the Primary Care Services, NHS England Area Team.

Clinical Supervision

Each trainee should have a named clinical supervisor for each placement, usually a senior doctor, who is responsible for ensuring that appropriate clinical supervision of the trainee’s day-to-day clinical performance occurs at all times, with regular feedback. For GP trainees the clinical supervisor will be a hospital consultant trainer or GP trainer (ST2 GP posts only).

• Understand their responsibilities for patient safety.
• Be fully trained in the specific area of clinical care.
• Offer a level of supervision necessary to the competences and experience of the trainee and tailored for the individual trainee.
• Ensure that no trainee is required to assume responsibility for or perform clinical, operative or other techniques in which they have insufficient experience and expertise.
• Ensure that trainees only perform tasks without direct supervision when the clinical supervisor is satisfied that they are competent so to do; both trainee and clinical supervisor should at all times be aware of their direct responsibilities for the safety of patients in their care.
• Consider whether it is appropriate (particularly out of hours) to delegate the role of clinical supervisor to another senior member of the healthcare team.  In these circumstances the individual must be clearly identified to both parties and understand the role of the clinical supervisor.  The named clinical supervisor remains responsible and accountable for the care of the patient and the trainee.
• Be appropriately trained to teach, provide feedback and undertake competence assessment of the trainees in the specialty.
• Be trained in equality and diversity and human rights best practice