Created in 2012 in partnership with the Centre for Better Health, a community-based charity in Hackney, east London, this artisan bakery, which uses locally sourced ingredients to make sourdough bread, provides trainee placements to adults recovering from mental illness.
While trainee placements are not specifically therapeutic, Agren feels this approach to making bread is good for the mental wellbeing of all involved: "It's not complicated but it's a lengthy process, and the time also gives [the bread] flavour.
He should look carefully at how the system works: teacher education in Finland is embedded in universities and, as a minimum, takes two years As it is, our schools do a fantastic job with trainees on placement and the link between schools and universities is already strong.
The 12 trainees with placement concerns were rated somewhat lower in sections A and B of their interviews (section C ratings were omitted as they were only available for one), but none of these differences approached significance.
The centre of excellence should offer trainees elective placements in subspecialty areas such as renal ultrasonography, Doppler fistula studies, renal palliative care, renal histopathology and plasma exchange.
The study was conducted whilst the trainee was on placement in the Public Health Unit in Tamworth, Hunter New England Population Health.
Twelve trainees failed a placement or provoked serious concerns about their performance on placement.
Close ties to the local teacher training college provide learning opportunities and pre-service placements for trainee educators.
More generally, current UK GP training, in which only 40% of trainees experience a hospital paediatrics placement, should be reformed so that all GP trainees have core paediatric training.
It may be advisable for courses to collect contemporary ratings of trainee performance beyond academic and placement indicators, and to test their reliability and usefulness in monitoring trainee progress.
