WESTERN DIVISION

Profile The award winning North West NHS Trust is now part of the largest health Board in Wales; the Betsi-Cadwaladr University Health Board and is a dynamic and progressive organisation that provides services of the highest quality to the counties of , and parts of Conwy.

Located in an area of outstanding natural beauty, it serves a population of about 225,000 people as well as large numbers of holidaymakers who are attracted to the area every year.

The BCUHB(W) is situated in the heart of Snowdonia, offering a great outdoor life with the National Sailing Centre at Plas Menai, which offers sailing and outward bound courses, only some two miles away, Plas y Brenin (outward bound centre), and Beacon Climbing Centre are also close by as is the port at Holyhead which provides easy links to Ireland. Snowdon, (the highest mountain in Wales and England) is a twenty minute car ride from Ysbyty Gwynedd and offers numerous trails, or for the less energetic, a narrow-gauge rail system that runs regularly to the summit. Horse riding, go-karting, mountain biking and quad-biking, historic houses and castles are just some of the many local attractions available. The cities of Chester, Manchester and Liverpool are easily accessible by rail or road. The hospital has close links with Bangor and Universities and many of the medical students will have resided in one of the University Campuses.

BCUHB(W) is an educational, social and recreational opportunity not to be missed!

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The BCUHB (Western) The BCUHB(W) employs around 5000 staff, has an annual budget of nearly £200 million and is always looking to the future. It continually develops and modernises its services in order to ensure that the people under its care have access to health services of the highest quality which are provided by highly skilled and professional staff.

The BCUHB(W) is committed to education, teaching and personal development. It has a state of the art Clinical Skills Laboratory offering practical skills supported by simulation manikins Simman, Metiman and Simbaby. A dedicated PC skills suite facilitates ECDL and other computer related training and has eleven computers available. The Education Centre and Clinical School have between them 8 lecture rooms and a fully equipped 140 seat Lecture Theatre.

Teaching The Foundation trainers are enthusiastic, approachable and experienced teachers, some having higher teaching qualifications via Cardiff University (PCME). One of our consultants reached the finals of the UK Surgical Trainer of the Year Award, and another was runner up for a BMA Teaching Award 2012.

In addition to the basic core curriculum the Trust runs courses for ATLS, ILS, ALS, APLS, ALERT. ‘Breaking Bad News’ courses are also held here. Regular teaching sessions include: Cardiology, interpretation of ECGs and X-ray interpretation. A sample programme diary is appended. Specialist study days are held regularly. Topics include, Post-Operative Care, Emergency Endoscopies, and Medico-Legal Issues etc. Dr A R Starczewski offers modules in patient safety from the NPSA. Recently we have been developing innovative leadership courses taking advantage of our unique surroundings. These have included a ‘high ropes’ course in Llanrwst and a sailing adventure course based at the National Water sports centre in Plas Menai.

The Board (W) hosts many prestigious Society meetings and the Royal College of Physicians PACES exams are held here annually. Increasing links with Bangor University offer potential for developing other skills including research opportunities, particularly with the academic foundation posts available at Bangor.

Rotations The rotations have been recently redesigned to offer popular specialties including, anaesthetics, acute medicine and academic rotations. Retention from FY1 to FY2 is one of the highest in Wales (66%).

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The Education Centre The Education Centre and Library staff are friendly, approachable and very supportive. They actively encourage suggestions for improving the service and act as a ‘contact point’ for all healthcare professionals. The Centre Manager operates an open door policy for all grades of doctors and ‘Drop In’ clinics are offered weekly with the Foundation Programme Director to discuss, in confidence, any issues that may arise.

Contact Details Website: http://www.northwestwales.org/

Ms Jean Williams Medical Education & Medical Appraisal Manager [email protected] 01248 384621

Dr Damian McKeon MRCP Foundation Year Programme Director [email protected] 01248 3844327 (sec)

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CENTRAL DIVISION

Profile At the Trust we aim to provide high quality training for junior staff in a supportive and friendly setting. We offer the following: • A busy, energetic and modern hospital. • Careful and helpful induction into your post. • A lot of clinical experience and responsibility. • Enthusiastic and supportive senior staff providing good supervision. • Excellent core curriculum training, well organised departmental training and Grand Rounds. • Well protected teaching time. • Excellent internet access.

We have been told that we have the best District General Hospital Library in the United Kingdom.

There is a superbly equipped postgraduate education centre on site, with facilities greatly enhanced by the North Wales Clinical School.

Many doctors find that the first two years after qualifying are when the most important lessons of medicine are learnt. We understand this, and we plan to help you to become a caring, competent, resourceful, efficient and good doctor. It is also true that the first two years can be pretty stressful. We are aware of this and offer a supportive environment in which to work. The fact that so many doctors who come to this Trust during their training subsequently return to take up permanent employment with us is testimony to the good working atmosphere.

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Location Being in the middle of North Wales carries geographical advantage. To the west, the hospital is within easy striking distance of the stunning beauty of Snowdonia, and the beaches of Anglesey. You can be at the foot of awe inspiring mountains 40 minutes after leaving work on a summer evening or out on the wide Anglesey beaches within an hour. To the east, it is only 30 minutes to Chester, definitely the favourite shopping, browsing and entertainment venue for North Wales.

The urban jungles of Liverpool and Manchester are one hour away. The leisure facilities in the local area include a huge variety of sports, theatre, cinema and cultural activities, and are of the high standard that is to be expected in one of Britain’s major holiday destinations. There are direct trains to London and Cardiff. Glan Hospital

Glan Clwyd Hospital There are three district general hospitals in North Wales. Glan Clwyd Hospital occupies the central position, and is set in beautiful surroundings on a green field site only 4 miles from the sea, with the rolling hills of the Vale of Clwyd to the south. The hospital serves the population of the busy coastal towns, and the rural towns inland. During the summer a vast number of people come to North Wales for their holidays, and the wards are kept busy with this seasonal influx.

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Glan Clwyd Hospital has 551 acute beds and also has: • The North Wales Cancer Treatment Centre. • The Renal and Diabetic Unit. • The Acute Medical Assessment Unit. • The Sub-regional Neonatal Unit. • The North Wales Clinical School. • The Cardiac Catheter laboratory.

Accommodation Good quality accommodation for junior doctors is provided at Glan Clwyd hospital. The recent opening of a new award winning accommodation block for medical students has freed up more space on site.

Doctors’ Mess Glan Clwyd believes that a healthy mess means a lot to junior doctors. Our popular Mess is in the middle of the hospital and is often quoted as being one of the best a lot of our doctors have visited. It is very comfortably furnished with sofas, newspapers, magazines, a range of snacks and a large screen TV with a full SKY package. There is also a separate computer room with internet access. It is a comfortable haven for keeping up with the progress in a Test match if the wards go quiet, catching up with the news and gossip, and picking your colleagues’ brains about clinical problems. Mess life is of course what you make it and there are events organised such as cinema outings, sports, meals and Christmas parties.

Working from an office within the mess, the Doctors’ Welfare Officer manages the Mess and provides advice, guidance, and local wisdom, helping you to settle into your post and make the most of it.

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Other Facilities • The Occupational Health Department offers a full range of services including physiotherapy assessment clinics, as well as independent confidential counselling. • ATM machine. • The hospital is well served by public transport. • An excellent and reasonably priced hospital canteen.

What your predecessors said about us • Fantastic location, superb, very sociable and supportive. • Organised teaching sessions, good library. • Working atmosphere in this hospital is good with friendly and helpful consultants, senior colleagues and nursing staff. Good staff residence. • Only 30 minutes to Chester – a brilliant place to live (you don’t have to live in the hospital). • Very close to Liverpool and Manchester airports – ideal for minibreaks. • Nurse practitioners provide fantastic support to the PRHOs. Also physician’s assistant’s help during on-calls. • Surgery is quite sociable as staff from all 4 surgical wards interact quite frequently, which allows F1s to help each other a lot. • A lot of help for juniors. • Excellent mess with dedicated mess manager. • Choice of teaching every day. • Nice experience to work in Glan Clwyd. • A very friendly and very busy hospital – we get to see a great variety of patients. • Excellent protected teaching sessions compared to bigger hospitals. • A very good place for junior doctors. • This was my first job in the UK. I was very worried, but right from the start I felt that this place is really wonderful with a friendly environment and friendly colleagues. Lots of teaching sessions and classes for further development. • Nice hospital – good friendly consultants and staff.

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The Health Board website provides more detailed information.

Contact Details: Chief Executive: Mrs Mary Burrows Chairman: Mr Merfyn Jones Medical Director: Mr Mark Scriven North Wales Faculty Lead for Trainees: Dr Teresa Ching Foundation Programme Director: Dr Sanjay Ingley Postgraduate Centre Manager: Mrs Deryn Evans

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EASTERN DIVISION

Profile is the largest town in North Wales (pop 70,000) and is situated near to the Welsh/English border, being approximately 10 miles from the Heritage City of Chester. It has a thriving industrial centre and is also the market town for a large rural hinterland. With the decline in the local coal and steel industries, there has been a steady progression towards light industry in the area including electronics, pharmaceuticals and plastics.

There are excellent links via dual carriageway and motorway to the national motorway network from Wrexham and the surrounding areas, and the cities of Manchester and Liverpool are less than an hour away by car .The festival town of Llangollen, the walled city of Chester, the Meres of North Shropshire and the internationally recognised Theatre Clwyd at Mold are all within 15 miles of the hospital.

Shopping The town centre has a wide array of shops, supermarkets and amenities with relatively new developments and retail parks that will meet most of a family’s needs.

For a wider choice, Chester has a superb shopping centre with excellent restaurants and recreational facilities. As a heritage city Chester also has outstanding historical & archaeological sites. The cities of Liverpool and Manchester are 45 minutes away.

Schools and housing There are excellent local state schools and a variety of easily accessible private schools. Due to the influence of the Welsh Assembly education policy may differ from England. For example there is a different approach to testing for younger children, which is believed to be more favourable. Further information can be obtained from ‘Parentsnet’, an Education Department web site for parents of children in Wales www.learning.wales.gov.uk/parents

Wrexham and its surrounding area has become a major growth area over recent years and this has led to many new housing developments offering very high quality accommodation. However, due to its semi-rural location, there are many small rural communities that also offer the alternative of quiet countryside accommodation in either Wales or rural Shropshire and Cheshire.

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Recreational opportunities There are a variety of both private and local authority sports and leisure facilities in the area and two famous racetracks at Chester and Bangor-on- Dee. Major theatres and concert venues are available in nearby Liverpool and Manchester, in addition to the excellent Theatre Clwyd in the town of Mold that attracts many major productions.

Wrexham has beautiful surrounding countryside and is ideal for walking, climbing and mountain biking. The Snowdonia Mountain Park is only an hour away by car.

Additionally, the coast of North Wales offers excellent sailing facilities at Conwy, Menai Straits, Abersoch and Barmouth. The coastal areas and resorts also provide excellent family facilities. For those wishing to travel further afield, there are ferry links to Dublin from Holyhead or Liverpool, in addition to the international airports at Liverpool and Manchester. Further information can be obtained from the following web sites:

www.nwt.co.uk www.wrexham.gov.uk/english/index.htm

Welsh language Working at the Wrexham Hospital you will find that English is the main language, but there are a number of communities in North Wales where Welsh is the language of choice.

For those children attending school in Wales, learning Welsh is a requirement up until the age of 16. There are a large number of easily accessible schools within the local area which fall on the “English” side of the Welsh border, where this is not an issue. There is a Welsh Language Act that requires all signposts and instruction leaflets to be written in both Welsh and English.

North Wales NHS Trust and the Wrexham Maelor Hospital North Wales NHS Trust was formed in 2008 from the merger of the North East Wales NHS Trust and Conwy and NHS Trust. It is a combined acute, mental health and community trust.

Wrexham Maelor Hospital Wrexham Maelor Hospital is a medium sized District Hospital in North Wales. For most specialties it serves a population of around 300,000. It is situated on the outskirts of Wrexham town (pop 129,300) which is near the Welsh/English border. The primary catchment area is made up of the Wrexham and unitary authorities. A significant number of patients do, however, come from , Cheshire, the Wirral and Shropshire.

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Wrexham Maelor Hospital has around 779 beds with most medical and surgical specialities and inpatient mental health accommodation on site with just over 120 Consultants. Visiting Consultants provide Plastic Surgery, Neurology, Neuro surgery and Super Specialist Paediatrics services. Oncological services are provided by Visiting Consultants from the recently opened North Wales Cancer Centre. The Shooting Star Unit opened early in 2004 for general oncological treatment of patients and contains the symptomatic breast clinic.

The accommodation for doctors working in the Wrexham Maelor Hospital has recently been improved by the addition of new accommodation for students attached to the Hospital. There is both Single and Married accommodation available.

The doctors mess has been supported by the Trust over many years and has dining facilities for junior doctors and for consultants, it is therefore possible to talk shop without any concerns. There are comfortable rooms for looking at newspapers, reading, and relaxing watching TV. There is a computer room and a teaching/hot review room. It is a focal point for doctors of all grades. There is usually a Winter, and Summer Ball, and the Doctors’ Mess can be a centre for your social life. There is a Hospital Cricket Team, a Golf Society, and there are other social attractions to working in Wrexham.

Postgraduate Education With an outstanding range of modern teaching facilities, Wrexham Medical Institute is one of the UK’s leading postgraduate centres, providing an active centre for learning and the development of hospital and community doctors, as well as GPs, dentists and nurses. The 126 seat state of the art lecture theatre is fully loaded for 21st Century interactive teaching.

The Wrexham Medical Institute The six seminar rooms feature fully integrated AV systems with ceiling mounted projectors, bespoke screens, hand-built equipment cabinets and specially designed lecterns in beech veneer. The Intellect controller is a fully expandable system capable of handling a virtually unlimited number of source inputs and display outputs. The interactive facilities include multiple computer inputs plus DVD and video replay, Elmo visual presenters and stereo audio and speech systems.

‘The best kept secret in Wrexham’- fresh brewed coffee and homemade cake, fabulous salads and paninis… Have we got the best private caterers in Wales? We are constantly told so. Lunch in the atrium or walled garden is always a pleasure at the Postgraduate Centre.

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The Library in the Wrexham Medical Institute is widely regarded as an example of excellence. It is an accredited HealthCare Library and is open 18 hours a day 7 days a week for doctors who work in the Trust. There are computer rooms with 20 PCs in total, all with internet access. There are 190 journal subscriptions and an interlibrary loan service.

Undergraduate Education The Undergraduate Department at Wrexham is part of the North Wales Clinical School which links us to the clinical schools in Ysbyty Glan Clwyd and Ysbyty Gwynedd as well as Bangor, Cardiff and Glyndwr Universities. Each year, the Undergraduate Department plays host to approximately 320 students from Cardiff University and Manchester University. We also offer elective placements to students from all around the globe requesting to spend time in Wrexham. Our staff are extremely supportive of students and offer a wide range of teaching and clinical skills tutorials. We have a very close relationship with our F1s and F2s, many of whom have been students in Wrexham. They play a pivotal role in supporting and educating the medical students on placement here. Wrexham is a very popular choice for F1 doctors and the majority of our posts are filled by doctors who have been students here and wish to return.

A word of advice Employment law forbids us from phoning up anyone who knows you and asking them for an ‘off the record’ view on your abilities. However, nothing stops you from doing the same to us! We suggest you use this to your advantage. If you know anyone who has worked in Wrexham recently or if any of the Consultants for whom you have worked have dealings with us, why not ask them for their views on whether you will enjoy working in Wrexham.One small caveat; we aim to deliver a service that’s changing all the time to meet the needs of the local population, so beware of opinions that may be out of date! If you do hear something that doesn’t sound good to you ask us about it when you talk to us.

More Information More information is available at these websites: www.newalesnhstrust.org.uk www.nwt.co.uk www.wrexham.gov.uk/english/index.htm

13 Glan Clwyd Hospital Deryn Evans: [email protected] Tel: 01745 534304

Wrexham Maelor Hospital Fiona Dutton: [email protected] Tel: 01978 297889

Ysbyty Gwynedd Kylie Reynolds: [email protected] Tel: 01248 384080

Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board website: http://www.northwestwales.org/

The Wales Foundation School website: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/pgmde/sections/foundationtraining/

The Wales Foundation School email: [email protected]

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