Training in Anaesthesia Highlands of Scotland

The TDWS is a service provided by NES for doctors in training. They can help with Less than Full Time Training, careers advice, and signpost to lots of support. Some of their resources are freely available on their website to get started.

You can refer yourself to TDWS or allow your supervisor to refer you. A common reason is exam failure in which case they go through a list of aspects to explore, you can see this list online and go through it yourself in advance. The list includes – are you getting to teaching? do you have access to mock papers and past papers? The TDWS would ask about your study style and would discuss when is the best sitting to make your next attempt. They can also refer to an educational psychologist.

Another example of a reason for contact with TDWS is that a neurodivergent doctor in training is searching for support and adjustments. This sometimes includes a reluctance to move hospital base. Neurodivergent doctors, for example Autistic or doctors with ADHD do not require a formal diagnosis in order to access support from TDWS, help from “Access to Work”, and in fact to be protected by the discrimination act. Neurodivergent doctors are protected by law and classified as disabled.

Workplace adjustments – TDWS operates on ‘needs based support’. They could help you think about the type of work you do, the work pattern, the hardware and the software you use. They can support you in requesting and obtaining reasonable adjustments to be made in your work place by considering each of the ‘environment’, yourself the ‘individual’, and the ‘task’. They can signpost to valuable resources including the local Department of Medical Education team. Examples of adjustments include arranging sensory breaks for writing up notes. ‘Study Pods’ have been introduced in some hospitals. Noise Cancelling Headphones (including subtle in-ear noise cancelling technology).

Access to Work is a national, UK wide resource that TDWS sometimes signpost towards for resources for adjustments. It often takes a few months to get things via this route.

TDWS is beginning to perform exit interviews for all those in Scotland who exit training without an outcome 6 (satisfactory completion) at ARCP.