KGH has been granted Affiliated Teaching Hospital status Date: 01.03.12

Kettering General Hospital has been granted Affiliated Teaching Hospital status by University of Leicester Medical School for its consistently high standard of education for medical students.

The affiliation is a recognition of the hospital’s work over more than 20 years in helping to educate medical students from Leicester Medical School.

KGH’s Medical Director, Dr Andrew Chilton, said the hospital is delighted with the recognition.

He said: “Being granted Affiliated Teaching Hospital status is a strong statement of confidence in the hospital and should help us when we are recruiting doctors in the future to work here.

“It is a recognition of the vast amounts of time and effort our own consultants, doctors, nurses, clinical skills trainers and administrators have put into teaching medical students over the last 20 years.”

Kettering General Hospital’s Undergraduate Education Lead, Dr David Bland,said: “Every medical student who is learning to become a doctor at Leicester Medical School has to spend almost three of their five years learning in a clinical placement at a working hospital.

“We take more than 250 Leicester Medical School undergraduate medical students each year and train them in eight out the 12 different blocks on their course.

“The teaching at KGH is done by eight clinical block leads along with a wide variety of other doctors, nurses and clinical training staff.

“Our staff help the students to turn the theory they learn at the University into real life practice to build up their skills ready for when they qualify as a junior doctor.

“We take students all year around in sevenweek placements and during their time here they attend ward rounds and clinics, assess patients under supervision, attend lectures by KGH staff, and practice basic clinical skills in our Clinical Skills Laboratory.

Prof Stewart Petersen, Head of Medical Education at the University of Leicester, said: “Kettering General Hospital has been a very important partner for Leicester Medical School for many years and has played an increasingly important role over the last ten years.

“At the end of last year we reviewed the teaching programmes and facilities provided by KGH and agreed it would be appropriate to grant the Trust Affiliated Teaching Hospital status.

“This is in recognition of the very important role Kettering General Hospital now plays in helping to train medical students to a very high standard.”

What the students said (based on 2010-2011 student feedback questionnaires)

“KGH is a brilliant District General Hospital to be placed at. There are so many teaching opportunities and they are all excellent…….”

 “All the teachers in Kettering were excellent – they all had their own unique teaching methods but this was in a very positive note……”

“The staff at KGH were very welcoming and enthusiastic about teaching…….”

“All the staff in Kettering were extremely willing to help our learning and were extremely supportive. They gave lots of support and an incredible amount of teaching………..”

“We were made to feel incredibly welcome on the wards and were given many opportunities for further learning. As well as this the administrative staff were absolutely fantastic, being both incredibly helpful and friendly….”

When surveyed 89% of students agreed KGH ‘s clinical teachers were “very helpful and facilitated learning.”