Training for Medical Students and Foundation Doctors

On this page, you’ll find everything you need to deliver comprehensive eating disorders training in your medical school or foundation programme.

The course is written by experienced clinical trainers and developed with input from senior clinicians, medical students with lived experience, and advisors from the General Medical Council and NHS England. Each component has been piloted with a relevant group of students.

Beat, NHS England and the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Faculty of Eating Disorder developed this training in response to the PHSO investigation into avoidable deaths from eating disorders as outlined in recommendations from the report titled “Ignoring the Alarms: How NHS Eating Disorder Services are Failing Patients” (PHSO, 2017). It is designed to ensure that all medical students and foundation doctors are trained to understand, identify and respond appropriately when faced with a patient with a possible eating disorder.

A survey and a review of undergraduate and postgraduate training in 2017 found that the majority of UK doctors receive less than two hours of training about eating disorders during their entire 10 – 16 years of medical training and approximately 20% do not receive any training at all (Ayton and Ibrahim, 2018).

Dedicated to the memory of Averil Hart and everyone else who has died unnecessarily from an eating disorder, it is our hope that this training will be a significant step to ensuring that avoidable deaths from eating disorders are consigned to the past.

You can find out more about our campaign on this here.

Please watch this space for our training courses for GPs and nurses, which are also coming soon.

Training

Part 1: Medical Students (year 4 and above)

• E-learning module 1 available via e-Learning for Healthcare (please note this is available to all UK students, including those outside of England)
• Medical simulation training scenario 1
• Powerpoint 1 to accompany the medical simulation training
• User guide

Part 2: Foundation Doctors

We suggest you complete the training for medical students before embarking on part 2 of the training, aimed at foundation doctors.

• E-learning module 2 available via e-Learning for Healthcare (please note this is available to all UK students, including those outside of England)
• Medical simulation training scenario 2
• Powerpoint 2 to accompany the medical simulation training
• User guide

Additional Resources

• Dr Kiran Chitale explains how RCPsych Faculty of Eating Disorders came to work with Beat on this training.
• The following actors helped Beat to pilot this training and are available to support simulation training with your students. Please contact them directly to discuss their availability and day rate. We welcome further recommendations of actors who have experience of simulation training on eating disorders.
  
  
  • Dave Chawner
  • Anna Doolan