Chief Registrar - Medicine

Job Overview

Are you a passionate and motivated higher specialty trainee ready to take on a senior leadership challenge? We are excited to invite applications for the prestigious Chief Registrar role – a unique and highly rewarding opportunity to develop strategic leadership skills while making a meaningful impact on patient care, workforce wellbeing, and service innovation.

This role offers a minimum of 40% protected time away from clinical duties, enabling you to focus on leading and delivering high-impact local initiatives.

As Chief Registrar, you will drive improvements in key areas such as:

• Service transformation and redesign
• Workforce planning and morale
• Education and training development
• Staff engagement and wellbeing

You will act as a key liaison between the junior doctor workforce, senior clinical leaders, and management teams—bridging the gap and influencing positive, system-level change across the organisation.

In addition, you will be enrolled in a bespoke, nationally recognised leadership and management development programme delivered by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), beginning in August/September 2025. This structured programme provides the tools, mentorship, and network to help you thrive as a future leader in the NHS.

This is a career-defining opportunity for doctors looking to broaden their impact, contribute to healthcare innovation, and build the leadership capabilities essential for consultant-level roles and beyond.

Main duties of the job

As a Chief Registrar, you will take on a pivotal leadership role, helping to shape the future of patient care and medical education. With a minimum of 40% protected time for non-clinical work, this is a unique opportunity to gain hands-on leadership experience and drive meaningful change.

Your responsibilities will include acting as a key link between junior doctors, senior leaders, and managers to foster collaboration and engagement. You will lead quality improvement initiatives, enhance education and training, support workforce planning, and influence service redesign across the organisation.

All activities should place patient safety and high-quality, compassionate care at their core, in line with the principles of the Future Hospital Commission report: Future Hospital – Caring for Medical Patients (2013).

Working for our organisation

Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust provides NHS hospital services for around 900,000 people across Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey and south Buckinghamshire.

We brought together Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to create Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust on 1 October 2014.

Our three core values, and the behaviours that support them, guide everything we do and set out what we expect of our staff in the way they treat patients, visitors, service users and each other: Committed to Excellence, Working Together and Facing the Future.

We are also proud to host the Defence Medical Group South East at Frimley Park with military surgical, medical and nursing personnel working alongside the hospital's NHS staff providing care to patients in all specialties.

Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities

This prestigious leadership opportunity is open to doctors currently holding a National Training Number (NTN) and enrolled in a medical specialty training programme, ideally one that includes Internal Medicine. While participation in the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) Chief Registrar Leadership and Management Development Programme is primarily designed for those in internal medicine-related specialties, enrolment is not strictly limited to these pathways.

The Chief Registrar role may be undertaken either in-programme or out-of-programme (for training [OOPT] or experience [OOPE]), depending on individual training needs and local workforce considerations.

Where appropriate, any necessary extension to the Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) will be negotiated and agreed upon locally, with the involvement of the Head of School. For OOPT arrangements, approval from the relevant Specialist Advisory Committee (SAC) will be required.

Prospective applicants must discuss their interest in the Chief Registrar role with both their Educational Supervisor and Training Programme Director (TPD) at an early stage. Formal permission to apply must be obtained from the TPD prior to submitting an application.

In line with GMC requirements, the Chief Registrar post must be undertaken at a site that is GMC-approved for training in the applicant’s specialty, ensuring the role continues to support their broader development as a future consultant and clinical leader.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• MBBS or equivalent
• Full registration with the GMC
• Understands the principles and practice of audit

Desirable criteria

• Further qualification e.g MRCP or DGM

Competencies

Essential criteria

• Evidence critically reflects on own competence, understands own limits and seeks help when required

Desirable criteria

• Able to demonstrate ability to develop service provision

Professional Experience

Essential criteria

• Ability to manage stroke patients including emergencies
• Ability to clinically evaluate a patient, formulating a prioritized differential diagnosis, initiating an appropriate management plan, and reviewing and adjusting this depending on the outcomes of treatment
• Evidence of competence to work without direct supervision where appropriate
• Evidence of experience of independent decision making in regards to reperfusion therapies including thrombolysis and thrombectomy
• Previous experience of participating in teaching

Desirable criteria

• Evidence of involvement of significant service change associated with audit
• Previous participation in MRCP and DGM teaching

We are proud of the ambitions laid out in our strategy, Our Future FHFT, including our vision to be a leader in health & wellbeing, delivering excellence for our communities. We continue to invest in our services and facilities, including a £10 million upgrade to the hospital maternity unit as well as £49m major new Emergency Assessment Centre on our Wexham Park site. The opening of a brand new £100m state of the art hospital which replaced the existing hospital facility at Heatherwood and are planning to invest further in diagnostics and inpatient capacity at Frimley Park.

We have also made significant investment in our quality improvement and digital programmes to support our vision and we will ensure that we achieve our aim of providing the highest quality healthcare to our patients. Our new EPR – Epic – went live in June and we are already beginning to reap the benefits of this ambitious investment.

Our three core values, and the behaviours that support them, guide everything we do and set out what we expect of our staff in the way they treat patients, visitors, service users and each other: Committed to Excellence, Working Together and Facing the Future.

Apply online now