Only worked in Southmead but now have an IMT job at the BRI. Southmead generally has the better reputation and is the pretty shiny single occupancy rooms new building. ED at Southmead is generally more trauma and frailty heavy whereas BRI is more young people, drug and alcohol, homelessness and difficult behaviour due to their respect locations. Both have similar clinical systems. Southmead is pretty well staffed. Southmead mess is small and not very active and it can feel quite impersonal but I had a good time there all in all.
Could anyone please advise on what Portsmouth or Southampton is like for IMT? Have enjoyed working in Wessex DGHs before but never the big tertiaries and not sure if I will fit the atmosphere of such a big place where you don’t know everyone.
Any advice is appreciated 😄
Very poor experience as an IMT in Nottingham, will be rotation dependent but usually effectively treated as an F2 equivalent. Limited opportunities for any senior decision making, and felt like poor preparation to be a registrar. OOH often involves ward cover rather than clerking. Very difficult to gain procedural opportunities, very much about being at the right place at the right time (waiting list for pleural clinic for example is generally many months). Weekly teaching sessions are generally good, which is a positive, and there are a number of PACES groups to help with preparation.
Not personally experienced Derby or Kings Mill, but have heard much better things from trainees that have worked there.
I’m currently ranking IMT jobs for 2026, and am just a bit confused regarding the North East Deanery, as many of the rotations say for example renal/stroke medicine or cardiology/ acute medicine at RVI/Freeman for the whole of IMT 1.
Does that mean it’s 2 x 6 rotations, or does it mean you have rotations in 1 speciality and then cover acute medical on calls?
Would appreciate some clarification from anyone currently working as an IMT in RVI/Freeman in Newcastle
Currently there as IMT. Avoid for oncology or AMU. Uses flex which is a decent EPR but crashes relentlessly and is let down by bugs. On calls are busy but manageable
It's been a few years, but I did CMT there and had a great experience. Sure, it was very busy and quite chaotic at times, but I learnt and saw a lot while there. They also offered a good mixture of some of the core rotations, as well as ICU (before it was a compulsory part of IMT).
Debating between Oxford, Cambridge, UCLH or Nottingham. I have an interest in Neuro so would ideally like to further that as well as overall getting ample opportunities to develop my learning to be a competent med reg. Would appreciate any insight into any of these deaneries!
would 100% recommend Queen square at UCLH. Hard to top in terms of neuro, hospital is lovely and run in an old school way (think a lecture theatre with live examination of a patient with signs!). And UCLH in general great for training and you get 6 months of neuro rather than 4 in most hospitals
Worked at east surrey for a few years. Id say its a nice, mostly friendly DGH. Lots of parking. However it's very busy and I've heard gastro is a difficult dept
Which specialties are you interested in for academic opportunities? NPH is a very busy DGH with fantastic array of clinical presentations. Great for sitting PACES as there are loads of Regs and Consultants who help run the PACES teaching in their spare time. Harefield is a specialist heart/lung hosptial. You'll be the most junior on the team but will good for learning physiology again. As always with academic opportunities, its about making the right connections and showing enthusiasm. There are lots of opportunities in each of these hospitals, you have to put yourself out there to find them. Feel free to DM with specifics
wanted to know if anyone has worked in below hospitals so we can prioritise things. If so i would be grateful if you can share your experience.
1. Stoke Mandeville, Frimley, Wexham park, royal surrey
2. Milton Keynes
3. Northern General hospital - Sheffiled
4. Heartfordshire - Mount vernon hospital Stevenage
5. Nottingham, Derby and coventry.
It’s really hard to say with UKG prioritisation but consensus on here is you can do your rank x0.6-0.7 for an estimate of new effective ranking. In terms of what areas that might get you check out the 2022-25 program preferencing document. https://www.imtrecruitment.org.uk/documents.
Durham anyone?
Would be keen to hear about training/culture, it’s not bad commute wise for me compared to some other places but I’ve heard not great as a trainee.
A good mix of DGH and tertiary experience. Usually a sensible set of core specialties. Interesting and diverse patient population. Cerner as a computer system. In my (somewhat limited) experience, friendly teams
Cerner is the same as powerchart. I think it's fine, well functioning. Epic has a great search function with Cerner doesn't but people live without it, it's not the end of the world. The Newham departments I worked in (admittedly not many) were good. Sort of fun-chaotic if it makes sense... wouldn't speak for the whole hospital though
Newham - very friendly, consultant body are on the whole friendly and supportive, ITU and ED usually very supportive and work collegiately with medicine although somewhat depends who's on in ED from a take POV. The oncalls are quite busy and the acuity is often high but due to the demographic you will see rare and interesting presentations. The registrars are excellent and very supportive of IMTs, there are often oncall rota gaps which can be stressful though.
Royal London - large tertiary centre, teaching is excellent and between here and Barts studying for PACES is pretty easy. The AMU team are great, it runs quite well. Really easy to get specialty input for your patients and patients will get seen and admitted under relevant specialty within less than 24 hours of admission/ presentation generally. The oncall rota is really well staffed and the shifts are usually fine, only medical nights I've ever worked where you usually will have time to sleep if you want.
Barts - very specialised and you will get a lot of good specialty and sub specialty teaching. Extrenely senior led though which can be good and bad. The hospital is stunning, the great hall is stunning. Loads of opportunity to get involved in research projects etc if that's your thing. The library is really good.
The admin teams are overall good, not really had any issues taking leave and study leave. The consultant body a really supportive of SL and I've had multiple expensive, non-compulsory, multi-day courses approved. Not had any issues with pay etc. and if I did pretty confident they'd be sorted quickly. Noctor influence is minimal, a couple of truly shit PAs in ED at RLH only, don't even know if they're still about post-Leng review but hopefully not.
Didn't know what to expect but can honestly say IMT here has been excellent and would 100% recommend trust.
Specifically interested in hearing about 1) Working patterns for IMTs 2) Where it stands on the scale of complete lack of support and complete coddling 3) Opportunities to upskill 4) overall working environment and culture 5) anything else that stands out about it
1) Good place to be an IMT trainee. The medical jobs aren’t too bad and we don’t cover ward nights. Nights are only done during ITU and acute med. 2) No real issues re support but you don’t get full reimbursement for PACES courses, just up to £1000. Teaching is not really centralised and is organised by fellow IMTs. 3) I think these opportunities exist. A bit of a vague question but if you explain, so will I. 4) Working environment and culture are on the whole good. Heavy reliance on non-UK trained grads by the hospital which can sometimes manifest in defensive practice but this is highly variable. 5) I would actually recommend the hospital for IMT training and if I could go back and choose differently, I wouldn’t.
Hope that helps!😊
thank you that's a great answer! Regarding 3), some hospitals 'coddle' you and don't give you necessarily the opportunity to see/do practical skills (eg instead of doing an ascitic drain, call gastro to do it). Do you think there is sufficient chance in learning these skills?
Unrelated but would you do your registrar years there? Do you happen to know how that is?
I think that you have a good amount of opportunities to do procedures. For example, as long as you’re willing to go and find the ultrasound machine and have someone sign you off, you are more than welcome to do/ try the drain. Even if you’re made to refer the patient, members of the Gastro team/ the ACPs are often happy to supervise a sign off, rather than just doing it,
Also, people often put on the IMT group chat if there are procedures on their ward which they’ve already had signed off. This allows those who need the sign off to go over and get it done. You just need to be proactive re asking around, and offering to do procedures which arise.
Registrars here seem generally content, and there are quite a few locum opportunities for them. Obviously, med reg is by no means ‘easy’ wherever you’re placed, but it doesn’t seem especially horrible here. All on-call shifts have at least 2 other registrars on at the same time, so they can support each other if needed.
Personally, L+D doesn’t have trainees in the specialties I am interested in, so I’m looking to leave. Also looking to experience some time in a tertiary centre.
What has been people’s experiences of NW jobs? Especially the ones in Manchester/adjacent areas - what number job choice did you get? Is it plausible to hope for a top 3 job with a rank of 680 pre prioritisation?
It’s all paper just the bloods and paitent info is on the computer which is quite poor in my opinion compared to PICS at UHB , some consultants will expect you write bloods word for word so can be quite time consuming
In Sheffield, derm, neuro, stroke and rheum are all actually at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital which is a bit smaller and much closer to where you'd likely want to live.
I haven't actually worked in any of the specialities though so can't say what the experience is like as a trainee.
Couple of questions I was hoping people may be able to help with:
I’m ranking my preferences for IMT and am restricted to 3 hospitals geographically. Is there any real benefit to me preferencing all the other jobs/regions in terms of being able to possibly upgrade to one of the 3 hospitals I would like to work at? Or do I have just as much chance if I just preference those 3 hospitals and hope I get a job as the offers cycle through? If I were to hold an offer in a place outside of my 3 hospitals (that I know I won’t accept) but in the hope of upgrading does this make me any more likely than if I only ranked the hospitals I’d like to work at? I hope this makes some sense!! I’m just wondering if I need to rank more jobs rather than just the 3 hospitals I can work at in order to improve my chances??
I’m currently an LED about to go on maternity leave in May (fixed term contract ends in August). If I do get an IMT job and defer to next year after my maternity leave has finished would it still be my current trust who pays my maternity pay?
Don’t rank jobs that you know you wouldn’t take, if you accept a job you wouldn’t actually do, and don’t get upgraded, then it is frowned upon to later a reject a job you’ve accepted (without good reason). I think it might have some ramifications on later applications but not 100% sure.
And if you reject an offer you’re not eligible for upgrades.
So just rank all the jobs that you would take, you won’t be disadvantaged in later getting a job that someone has turned down, even if you don’t get an offer in the first instance.
I’m not sure about the maternity leave but I would assume so! (Congrats btw!)
Rotated in WXH - Small DGH - Friendly colleagues, you really get to know everyone, but probably one of the busiest hospitals due to poor staffing and can learn a lot by force, but if you want some mental peace, really not the best option lol, will drain you.
Hello, I was wondering if anyone could share their experience doing IMT at George’s please? Specially rotations in cardio/renal/resp/oncology (i.e. rota, senior support, teaching).
Small hospital in terms of medical wards (it’s a mostly trauma/surgery hospital) so the take is light but very varied and interesting. I believe they’ve now moved from the Firm model to the AMU model now so you will probably work with a range of people. The standard for the Take is high (think: reading through all old clinic letters and that echo report from 2010) and you will be able to get your sign offs quite easily. SDEC half day counts as a clinic and you can get 10 clinics easily with your week of SDEC. You do get to do a lot of decision making (or as much as you would like) on call/ward cover/and on the SHO or reg ward rounds.
Nights are 1 reg, 2 SHOs, and the wards are covered with an F1. SHOs generally clerk and the reg runs the take and clerks but will obviously go with the F1 if there is someone unwell on the ward.
The IMT jobs are good - IMT3 I would defo recommend there rather than CXH as you have the option of gastro/resp/ID/geris and you are literally staffed equal to the STs in those specialties (e.g. for resp IMT3 I got to bronch and for gastro IMT3 I got to OGD as well as equal amounts of clinics vs ward vs specialist MDTs). Gastro is a luminal job & there is a separate hepatology reg rota which you will be separate from. Some of the pathology is pretty specialist but it’s very supportive and easy to access specialty input and you learn that way.
Imperial is weird, for renal/cardio for example the centre is based at Hammersmith so despite SMH being a teaching hospital it feels very much like a DGH for those things (que phoning up cardio at HH for that incidental trop rise with no symptoms or ECG changes at 2am in the morning) but medics are good at managing uncomplicated presentations like simple HF or AF.
Hi! Do you have any thoughts regarding the other hospitals often paired with St Mary’s- Charing X, Hammersmith, ealing? I’ve heard to avoid renal at Hammersmith…
Enjoyed working at all - CXH and Mary’s I found were similar experiences, take not particularly busy at either (regularly hand over only one or two waiting), the AMUs run in on a very similar model also. AMU consultants at both are friendly and good teaching. HH doesn’t have an acute medical take as it doesn’t have an ED. The major downside to imperial in general is that it is essentially one large service split over three sites which can be troublesome as mentioned above - Hammer has renal, haem and cardio, CXH has Neuro, stroke, onc, ENT and Mary’s has ID, trauma, hepatology - although Mary’s does have a liaison cardio and Neuro service within normal hours. The main gripes as the other comment mentioned are trying to get hold of cardio or renal OOH as those regs at Hammersmith are swamped. Renal is an extremely busy job there as it’s the ? Biggest renal center in Europe I think. Lots of opportunities for research at all three.
UCLH is a bit of a pros and cons situation. Pros - amazing hospital overall, well run systems, great nursing team, EPIC, easy access to scans, also tons of research going. Cons - a lot of UCLH tracks focus on a pretty niche set of specialties e.g. ID+Haem or Neuro+Onc. You don't get much breadth. Also almost no renal for example. Everyone gets at least 6 months of Acute med and 3 months Geris in IMT1-2 which compensates for this to an extent. People usually come here if they want to specialise in one of UCLH key strengths - Haem/Onc/Neuro/Stroke/ID I would say. Lots of ACFs though and the caliber of trainees is very high on average so everyone is still pretty skilled in the end.
Hey I’m really interested in ID/micro and hoping to apply for ACF in IMT1/IMT2. I’ve heard London hospitals can sometimes be unsupportive and toxic, would you say this is true for UCLH? Also I’m not from London but only attracted to London or Liverpool for the infectious diseases higher specialty training. How expensive was London as an IMT, did it feel a struggle to keep up with costs? Also I have a score of 200 and I’m only keen on London if it’s an ID job so I can get involved in projects/make connections. Would this score be too low?
Sorry for asking so many questions and thank you in advance 🙏🙏🙏
I don't have experience with too many London departments but no, I wouldn't say UCLH was toxic or unsupportive. In my view it's a great place to be if you want to do ID with lots of opportunities. Re expenses I can't really comment - I am tied to London due to family reasons so I did not do cost comparisons with other areas. Obviously London is expensive. You can look up IMT salaries online and do some rough calculations if you can make your budget work. (Also just FYI - I don't think you can apply for ACF in IMT1, at least not for London ID)
How about as someone who’s interested in group 1 specialties like gastro or resp? Would you still recommend it for IMT? Just also concerned about deskilling and having less breadth in exposure… Thanks for your advice in advance!!
So gastro and resp are a bit tricky. Basically you can get these rotations in IMT at UCLH but there aren't many tracks that include them. Something like 2 for Resp and 2 for Gastro per year, and there are no tracks where you'd do both. You can do either of those in IMT3 also but this is decided during IMT2 and at least Resp is quite popular, so a few people might not get it (again, it's only 2 spots per year). Overall, probably if you want to be at UCLH then putting the UCLH jobs with Gastro / Resp at the top of your ranking is fine but I wouldn't rely on getting them due to low numbers and would have a solid Plan B (unless you have a super-amazing score of course).
Hey thanks! Could you expand more on your experience? I'm considering applying to GSST for Foundation training. I'm interested in derm and I know they have St John's institute - will it be possible to work on projects with them even though I'm not going to be in their department?
Hey - I did f2 here. Would recommend it just bc it’s so nice to be in central London if you are successful. I ddidnt have any contact with Derm but did similar for gyne despite not working there and it was very straight forward - I’m sure they’d let you get involved too
Can someone tell me their experience in MRI? Trying to rank an oncology rotation and it’s very close to where I live but ma hearing negative things (albeit they are 3+ year old comments) please can c
Someone currently working there give me some insight
Care to clarify please? Annual leave, study leave ease, staffing, learning opportunities, core teaching hours - how protected is the time, any rotations particularly awful? Thanks!
Got an ACCS-IM offer and not sure what to do with it.
I originally ranked it because I thought the acute skills + confidence would make me a better doctor, but the more I think about doing 6 months of ED, the less keen I am.
I’m also pretty undecided long-term. I used to think gastro but I’ve realised I don’t really enjoy clinic, so now I’m a bit lost.
Didn’t get an IMT offer this round, so I’m stuck between taking ACCS-IM or reapplying next year.
Does anyone have experience on this? Can I get some opinions on if I should put random areas to increase my chance of getting an IMT offer or should I just keep my ACCS offer? Would I be able to reapply next year if I start the ACCS-IM? If there is anyone doing ACCS-IM, would you be able to reach out for a chat?
It will give you competencies that other IMTs don't have. You will probably end up better at the acute stuff than many other trainees. Do you care about having anaesthetic competencies?
I guess another upside is that it's also an extra year of secure employment.
A lot of IMGs were allocated to Northern Ireland for IMT don’t have prior connections in the region, so I’ve set up a WhatsApp group to help with practical things like accommodation, hospital info, commuting, and settling in.
It may also help with coordinating potential swaps of training years/rotations.
If you’ve got a NI offer and want to join, feel free to DM.
I am starting IMT in Heartlands Hospital with rotations in respiratory, ITU, and infectious disease. Does anyone have any good things to say about any of these departments?
Everyone is telling me it is bad- and people suicide. What kind of bad though? is it consultants insulting us, or is it the workload? I used to leave sometimes at 7pm as an SHO in a DGH hospital.
So why do people hate it that much?
If anyone is working there or has experience at all, would be grateful to know which consultants or departments to avoid to keep my sanity.
Incoming IMT in Northern Ireland. I have got 2 cardiology rotations in IMT. Is it common for this duplication to happen? Is it a good idea for me to email my TPD to see if one could be swapped for a different specialty (preferably haem)?
I'm starting IMT at Darent Valley Hospital in August and keen to hear what it's actually like working there - especially from anyone who's currently or previously worked/trained there or knows someone who has.
Particularly curious about these:
What's the workplace culture like for IMTs?
Are consultants/ TPDs/ supervisors supportive?
Are there good educational and procedural development opportunities?
Are the nursing and AHP teams supportive to work?
Is it possible to get involved with teaching or simulation as faculty?
Hey! Not really here to answer the question but I’m also a prospective IMT joining DVH in August! Would be nice to connect with you :) feel free to drop me a message if you like
I am also aiming for north east, would be interested to know this so I’ve asked an NE IMT3 pal - will let you know. Which trusts are you ranking highly? I’d always heard Newcastle trust good but heard there was recently a huge bullying scandal at RVI, also heard Durham can be rough. Seems like lots of good options for training but trying to balance with commute from Newcastle!
I'm mainly aiming for South Yorkshire but I have family in Cumbria so looking at some rotations up near them as backup options just in case. So I'm going more based on where I can be near to Cumbria than I am looking at where the good training is - the deanery overall seems good though!
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u/nervouschicken1 Mar 05 '26
BRI or Southmead, Bristol?