Foundation Year 1

Foundation Year 1 trainees start their Induction and Shadowing in the first week of July. This lasts two weeks during which trainees receive Introductory talks regarding foundation training, the work environment and safe practice (amongst others). They also have ample time to shadow their peers and get hands-on experience in the wards. In the second week, they start doing on-call shadowing and get a handover of patients. During Induction, trainees are also familiarized with several important resources which are available on registering with the login area of this website.

A Curriculum is available by the United Kingdom Foundation Programme Office (UKFPO) and is regularly updated. Foundation year 1 doctors are expected to follow the Curriculum and link evidence of competences they gain during the Programme to the Curriculum domains. Similarly, the Operational Framework which we were using for 2009 has been updated by the UKFPO and is now called the Reference Manual. Both documents are available in our login area.

A 5-day taster can be organised in a specialty of your choice . You may contact the Foundation Programme Office to be able to organise a taster in the specialty of your choice. Please advise us well ahead of your intended taster so that we will be able to organise this for you. You are entitled to 5 days study leave for this taster experience. You can see the taster specialty timetables here.

A Generic Teaching Programme will be delivered every Thursday from 13.00. This time is protected time, meaning that the trainees are excused from performing clinical work during this time. Emergency work should still continue, and doctors on-call will cover for emergency work.  An attendance of at least 70% of these teaching sessions is mandatory.

Immediate Life Support teaching day. (Basic Life Support - BLS- is a prerequisite for Foundation Year 1 and trainees who intend to join the Malta Foundation Programme are advised to attend a recognized BLS course prior to joining)

Clinical Skills and Simulation Training (Lead Dr Josef Micallef)

Each trainee will be assigned an Educational Supervisor for one year, who will change for the second year. Regular meetings with the Educational Supervisor will be organised throughout the training.

The trainees are to perform the following minimum number of Supervised Learning Events (SLEs) in Foundation Year 1:

6   Case-based discussions (CbD)

6   Mini Clinical Evaluation Encounters (Mini-CEX)

6   Mini Clinical Evaluation Encounters (Mini-CEX)

3   Directly Observed Procedural Skills (DOPS) - procedures are not those listed in the logbook

1   Developing the clinical teacher assessment form

Trainees also need to keep a Logbook of procedural skills on the e-portfolio: all 15 procedures need to be achieved in the logbook by the end of FY1

As part of their assessment of progression, trainees need to send out two Multi-Source Feedback (MSF) to at least 10 colleagues. This is part of the Team Assessment of Behavoiur (TAB) which provides insightful information for discussion between the trainee and their Educational Supervisor during appraisal meetings. The MSF-TAB typically should be sent out in the first and third quarter of the programme.

Foundation Year 1 doctors have to pass the Precribing Safety Assessment (PSA) in order to progress to Foundation Year 2.

See also Minimum requirements for satisfactory completion of the Foundation Programme.