Friendly department with strong consultant and registrar present, all of whom are happy to teach. As a core trainee be prepared to not be allowed to make any decisions regarding patient care as the nursing staff will go straight to the consultant with any queries. On the whole, the nurses are a friendly bunch with a very good senior charge nurse running the ward. They are competent at bloods, cannulae and using PICC lines so you very rarely have to do any of this, which makes a nice change from other medical wards. Usually, the ward is well staffed with FY1, middle grade, registrar and consultant, this leaves a lot of time for QI/exam revision so take advantage of the opportunity. There are opportunities to attend the regional haem-onc MDT and this is encouraged by the consultants. Unfortunately, you will still be on the general medical rota which is fairly on-call heavy.

Avoid general surgery here at all costs. There is a general culture of undermining the Registrar's. They are spoken down to and given demeaning jobs. I would not say registrars are valued by the consultants. No one is allowed to operate independently, even a simple appendix. The department is inefficient and there is no motivation for it to change. The relationship with A&E is unpleasant and toxic

Toxic, bullying, undermining and one of the worst jobs you'll ever do. Trainees are continually belittled and spoke to with little respect. Minimal theatre time and when you are it is with minimal independence. Lots of people have complained, had discussions with management about the bullying from senior consultant staff and nothing changes. Slap a few civility posters on the wall and thats it all fixed. Behaviour is them mimicked my senior registrars. I thought I was going to be a surgeon and this made me re-think even being a doctor, why do adults treat other adults like this? (Have been totally torn to shreds by a registrar on multiple occasions with an audience to watch) Look after eachother as the cavalry are not coming to fix this anytime soon.

Put off writing this for a while until I moved as I have mixed feelings and didn’t want to seem negative to some of the great staff in the department. The theatre based Anaesthetic consultants who help run the department are friendly and invest a lot into trainee development. This is not the case for the intensive care side (except a few). There is a large fracture between the two groups, with top heavy management roles amongst too many senior staff. This leads to total distraction during clinical time with almost all focus on getting the ward round done so they can attend meetings or continued interruptions to answer phone calls. All of these things would not be an issue however at this hospital all night shifts are on ICU, backfill and weekend cover to ICU mean a totally demoralising and purely service provision role on these shifts. There is no ICU teaching, zero ward round interaction, minimal encouragement or enthusiasm to developing the trainees. Unfortunately the leaving of some of the best consultants and assets to the hospital has not been wake up call enough. There is a toxic, outright misogynistic and patronising view of the non ICU staff and they are very undervalued. Their opinions are overlooked, disparaged and even mocked in front of trainees behind their backs. These shifts combined with interactions to a dysfunctional surgical department made this a an exhausting hospital placement. The department is held together by the kindness and dedication of the core anaesthetists group. However, I suspect you cannot paper the cracks forever and certainly what is there to attract new young consultants?

Lots of patients with minimal senior support and staffing issues on registrar, SHO and FY rotas. Seniors completely ignore the ward and leave all responsibility to the middle grades. Usual surgical ward round requires a rapid pace and ideally two or three months experience in the department before beginning to navigate successfully. Very little opportunity for operating/ clinic. No educational provision, teaching given ad-hoc by a few friendly middle grades.