Specialised Foundation Programme (SFP)

We are pleased to announce that our School of Medicine will be offering a Specialised Foundation Programme in partnership with NIMDTA. The programme will be commencing in August 2024.

Please see the information below on the application process and the specialisms we offer.

How does the Application Process work?

The eligibility criteria for the Foundation Programme and the Specialised Foundation Programme (AF2) are the same.

All final year UK medical students are therefore eligible to apply but must show the potential to fulfil a demanding academic role while still achieving clinical competencies.

Further information on the recruitment process is available on the Foundation Recruitment (nimdta.gov.uk) webpages.

Programmes on Offer

Personalised Medicine Research

Discipline

• Personalised Medicine

Centre

• Personalised Medicine Centre, School of Medicine

Lead Academic

• Dr David Gibson
• Email d.gibson@ulster.ac.uk
• Dri David Gibson Research Profile Link

Clinical Supervisor

Supporting supervisor academics (by optional disease focussed project)

1. Musculoskeletal Disease/ Pain: Dr David Gibson, Dr Priyank Shukla
2. Mental Health/ Alzheimer’s: Dr Elaine Murray, Dr Paula McClean
3. Cardiometabolic Disease: Dr Victoria McGilligan, Dr Catriona Kelly, Dr Taranjit Singh Rai

Project aim

Purpose: to provide foundation (F2) doctors with a 4 month development placement to acquire skills and aptitudes required in academic medical research.

Aims

1. Provide opportunity to develop academic research skills.
2. Develop awareness of pharmacogenomics to improve prescribing efficacy and safety.
3. Encourage future engagement with academia and an interest in pursuing a research or academic career.

Prior to starting the placement

Following successful application, you are invited to visit the Personalised Medicine Centre (PMC) to discuss the placement with Academic Supervisors.

This will help with planning a suitable research project and academic exposure.

Generic academic skills

By undertaking an academic F2 placement you will gain insights into clinical academic medicine through regular interactions with the Academic Supervisors, University scientific staff and postgraduate research students.

This placement is designed to develop your knowledge, skills and aptitudes for academic medicine and to foster interest in a long-term clinical academic career.

During the 4 month placement

Academic component

On joining the Personalised Medicine Centre you will have an appraisal meeting to review your learning portfolio and agree the educational objectives for this F2 placement.

You will receive feedback from your supervisor throughout the 4-month attachment with regular weekly meetings to ensure academic competencies are achieved.

You will be integrated into an active research team and have exposure to lab-based or data-analytics patient research and have opportunities to participate in centre journal clubs.

Research skills

1. A research project can be chosen in one of a number of topics relevant to personalised medicine and specifically pharmacogenomics. These include for example health economic, genomic, lab analysis, public/clinical data based studies in the disease areas listed above.  The project will be supervised by an experienced academic with support where appropriate from a clinical colleague.  Ideally, the research project will form (a) a poster or stage presentation and/or (b) part of a draft manuscript for subsequent peer review and publication.
2. Research training: It is envisaged you will be able to complete a number of research project tasks (learn about the research governance issues relevant to clinical/ academic research; undertake a literature review; interrogate a database; collate laboratory results; practise scientific writing; presentation of data in an abstract, as a poster and/or oral presentation). To assist in this we have planned for academic F2 doctors to spend time in the PMC laboratories or learning data analytics techniques. Trainees may also assist in current clinical /translational studies and receive training in the basics of participant recruitment, research ethics and governance.
3. Mentorship: You will have access to experienced academic staff (listed above) who are available to provide longer term advice and encouragement to help you pursue a career in academic research.

Teaching skills

Personalised medicine has active undergraduate and postgraduate educational opportunities.

1. You will be encouraged to participate in the undergraduate teaching (lecture and tutorial based teaching). This teaching may be directly observed by your academic supervisors or other staff from the Personalised Medicine Centre with opportunities for feedback to improve your confidence and competence.
2. Formal postgraduate education includes weekly research group meetings, research and clinical governance sessions held in the within PMC or within the wider team’s research groups.

Clinical component

You will have particular opportunities to expand your knowledge of chronic disease research in an outpatient setting with attendance at appropriate clinics, where depending on project focus you may review patients, consent to studies or collect patient data/samples (once formally added to ethical and governance approvals).

This will provide numerous encounters suitable for recording F2 competencies. Good Clinical Practice certification and basic ethics and research governance training will be given.

The placement will give opportunity to make connections with research colleagues in PMC, the wider School of Medicine, C-TRIC and Western HSC Trust.

Provisional job plan

This job plan has been designed to introduce the successful candidate to major areas of academic research.

Training in library and journal access will be provided in addition to the training on the relevant IT systems pertinent to clinical/patient based research.

References

1. Royal Pharmaceutical Society: Polypharmacy: Getting our medicines right
2. Royal College Physicians: Personalised prescribing: using pharmacogenomics to improve patient outcomes (download 2022 report).
3. Youssef E, Kirkdale CL, Wright DJ, Guchelaar HJ, Thornley T. Estimating the potential impact of implementing pre-emptive pharmacogenetic testing in primary care across the UK. Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2021 Jul;87(7):2907-2925.

Clinical Research in Obesity and Diabetes

Discipline

• Endocrinology

Centre

• School of Medicine, Ulster University

Lead Academic

• Prof Alex Miras
• a.miras@ulster.ac.uk
• Pure Profile Alexander Miras — Ulster University

Clinical Supervisor

• Prof Alex Miras

Prior to starting the placement - Please read the following papers

α-Melanocyte stimulating hormone promotes muscle glucose uptake via melanocortin 5 receptors. Enriori PJ, Chen W, Garcia-Rudaz MC, Grayson BE, Evans AE, Comstock SM, Gebhardt U, Müller HL, Reinehr T, Henry BA, Brown RD, Bruce CR, Simonds SE, Litwak SA, McGee SL, Luquet S, Martinez S, Jastroch M, Tschöp MH, Watt MJ, Clarke IJ, Roth CL, Grove KL, Cowley MA. Mol Metab. 2016 Aug 5;5(10):807-822.

Pharmacotherapy for chronic obesity management: a look into the future. Abdel-Malek M, Yang L, Miras AD. Intern Emerg Med. 2023 Jun;18(4):1019-1030.

Generic academic skills

You will gain an understanding of what it means to pursue a career in academic medicine through interactions with clinical academics, university staff and postgraduate students.

This placement is designed to develop your knowledge, skills and aptitudes for academic medicine and to foster interest in a long-term clinical academic career.

You will be encouraged to publish at least two peer-reviewed papers and attend at least one national or international conference.

You will also be supported in pursuing a long term career in academic endocrinology, including support for PhD funding in the field.

During the 4 month placement

Academic component

At the beginning of the placement you will have an appraisal meeting to review your learning portfolio and agree the educational objectives for this F2 placement.

You will receive feedback from your supervisor throughout the 4-month attachment with regular assessment to ensure academic competencies are achieved.

Research skills

You will get hands-on experience in the conduct of experimental medicine studies in humans.

This means that you will be administering peptide hormones and measure their effects on glucose control and food intake in real time.

These are first-in-human studies, which means it is the first time these hormones are administered to humans as part of the drug-development process for the treatment of obesity and diabetes.

You will develop the following skills:

• Setup
• regulatory approvals
• recruitment
• conduct of studies (oral glucose tolerance tests, insulin clamps, muscle biopsies, food intake measurements)
• laboratory analyses (muscle proteomics, plasma hormone measurements)
• statistical analyses including bioinformatics, scientific writing for publication and presentation skills

Teaching skills

You will be encouraged to participate in undergraduate teaching, including medical students amongst others, which will be observed by your clinical supervisor.

You will gain formal feedback on your teaching to improve confidence and competence.

Clinical component

You will attend a weekly diabetes and obesity full day clinic.

You will get the opportunity to  see new patients and follow-up patients.

This will provide numerous encounters suitable for recording F2 competencies in mini-CEX and CBL formats.

Tuition will also be provided on appropriate construction of dictated letters to fellow health professional and patients,

Global Health: Birth Defect Diagnosis

Lead Academic:   Professor Helen Dolk

The successful candidate will learn how to design and evaluate Health interventions for use in low resource areas of low income countries, specifically in the area of birth defect diagnosis.

The programme will cover the following:

• Investigating how the Global Birth Defects app could be developed to better support diagnosis;
• Early treatment of birth defects in low resource settings, and design implementation research to evaluate this;
• Depending on your interests, a specific extension for congenital heart disease could be designed. You will work with collaborators in subSaharan African countries.