Northumbria Healthcare is one of the country’s largest and top performing NHS foundation trusts, and rated as outstanding by the Care Quality Commission.
Northumbria Healthcare is one of the country’s largest and top performing NHS foundation trusts, and rated as outstanding by the Care Quality Commission.
1. Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital
2. Hexham General Hospital
3. North Tyneside General Hospital
4. Wansbeck General Hospital
5. Alnwick Infirmary
6. Berwick Infirmary
7. Blyth Community Hospital
8. Haltwhistle Memorial Hospital
9. Morpeth NHS Centre (outpatient clinics)
10. Rothbury Community Hospital
Northumbria Healthcare looks after the wellbeing of more than half a million people across Northumberland and North Tyneside – delivering care from 10 sites including the country’s first specialist emergency hospital, The Northumbria, with emergency care consultants working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The trust also manages adult social care services on behalf of Northumberland County Council and takes a national lead in developing new and innovative models of care.
The trust offers extensive training opportunities from direct clinical supervision to hands on support from its training supervisors so that all trainees are well looked after and offered regular feedback.
The vast majority of trainees will have the unique opportunity of spending some of their time at The Northumbria, the first purpose-built hospital of its kind in England which is dedicated to treating seriously ill or injured patients who will be brought in by ambulance or referred in by their GP.
Training is offered across a range of specialties with some of the largest departments in the region including trauma and orthopaedics, cardiology and colorectal surgery services.
The trust also boasts state-of-the art facilities including a specialist training centre for laparoscopic surgery for surgeons across the UK and Europe, as well as a dedicated clinical trials facility and an award-winning simulation centre equipped with the latest technology.
The trust is one of the North East’s largest employers with over 10,000 staff and we are consistently rated as one of the top trusts in England by our staff. In 2023, we were proud to retain our Maintaining Excellence Standard, the highest level of the Better Health at Work award. In addition, the trust has also maintained its ambassador status, recognising its work to support staff wellbeing – a status only limited organisations receive.
With one of the most extensive patient experience programmes in the country, we strive to ensure that every patient and their family has an exceptional experience of care. In the CQC’s 2022 Adult Inpatients Survey, we were highlighted as performing better than expected in an outliers report. Northumbria was the only acute trust in this report, with the other 11 being specialist trusts.
Since 2004 the Northumbria-Tanzania Partnership has been offering doctors in speciality training a unique and valuable opportunity to undertake research and clinical programmes at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Tanzania.
We have a faculty of appointed specialist tutors who will ensure you are well looked after, supervised and offered regular feedback. As a trainee you will work through a network of appointed educational supervisors who have a responsibility to train and support you and we are constantly driving standards higher through a quality management programme.
Our trainers themselves are continuously trained and assessed so you can expect the highest standards of development. In addition we will ensure that any junior doctor with additional training needs or difficulties will be very well supported throughout their stay in Northumbria.
We strongly encourage the participation of our junior doctors in the management and oversight of training within the trust and a small number of foundation and specialty trainees are appointed each year to membership of the trust’s Medical Education Board.
We also run an annual five day leadership programme which is free and open to all training grade doctors working in the trust. Feedback over the four years in which it has been running has been very positive.
As a foundation trainee will we also encourage you to participate in undergraduate teaching with regular ‘teaching the teacher’ courses.
Since 2004 the Northumbria-Tanzania Partnership has been offering doctors in speciality training a unique and valuable opportunity to undertake research and clinical programmes at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Tanzania. ST4 doctor in anaesthetics, Nishaan Nayar, explains:
“I had heard about the link between the Northumbria hospitals and KCMC in Tanzania, and when a consultant colleague informed me that he was going over with the team for a two week project and suggested I might want to be involved I jumped at the opportunity. I was the first anaesthetic trainee to go, although surgical trainees had been in the past. We were involved in a burns project and did a lot in and out of theatre; assisting with operations, setting up a new ward, providing pain relief, education in the community. I learnt a lot about working in a different system, working with basic and often faulty equipment, team working, communication difficulties. It really is quite a unique place as they get a lot of outside aid, but it is still very poorly resourced. The consultant anaesthetist that I went with was brilliant, and I learnt a lot from him.”
Ashley Scrimshire ST5
“Having been to university here I already knew the city is fantastic, the people are extremely friendly and the hospitals are supportive places to train. I am currently taking some time out of programme for research, something which is very much encouraged here. This is a fantastic opportunity for me personally and professionally. I am certain I would not have found such a great opportunity elsewhere.”
Zareena Amiruddin
F2
“I have felt very supported working in the hospitals here. Northumbria trust deals with a lot of general medicine which I feel is important to get experience in as a new doctor.”
Leigh Walker
F2
“Training at Northumbria allows you the opportunity to do as much or as little as you want. Everyone is welcoming and if you show an interest in a certain area of medicine someone will be there to guide and support you. “
