Combined infection training—a pioneering collaborative approach to educating infection specialists

Abstract

This commentary discusses the recent pioneering overhaul of training for UK doctors wishing to pursue a career in the infection specialities. Changes include the introduction of new curricula that embrace increased collaboration between the laboratory-based and clinical specialties and a broad-based infection training period, named 'Combined Infection Training', which has never been seen before. Here, we discuss the benefits and challenges associated with the collaborative approach to training with particular reference to points that educators responsible for training programme design need to consider. We also describe our own local experiences in adopting a proactive, multidisciplinary approach to address potential obstacles prospectively.

Training and assessment of medical specialists in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases in Europe

“…A few countries such as the UK still recognize Tropical Medicine as a separate specialty [53][54][55] [20,22,29,57,58]. Joint training in ID and CM/MM is particularly suitable for specialists whose practice is not bed-based, while ID specialists who will have primary responsibility for patients in their own beds need to acquire (and maintain) adequate generic skills in internal medicine.Joint training in CM/MM and ID is only approved in Estonia, Turkey and the UK and is being introduced in Ireland in 2021 [14].…”

“…The first two years of subsequent specialist training are common to all infection trainees, including both ward and laboratory-based learning and consult and clinic activity. Following this, trainees can follow tracks in ID alone (with internal medicine), MM or Medical Virology (MV) alone, or combinations of ID with either MM or MV [58]. In the revised 2021 curricula, an extra year of internal medicine has been added to the ID/internal medicine pathway and an extra year of joint training has been added to the ID with MM or MV tracks, taking all programmes to 7 years duration or 8 years for Tropical Medicine combinations [55].…”