Foundation Doctor's Guide to North Scotland

Scotland Foundation School is part of Scottish Medical Training. You can access our guides for the other regions of Scotland by clicking on the following links. East Scotland, South East Scotland, and West Scotland.

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The Northern region is significantly the vastest. It encompasses the old cities of Aberdeen and Inverness (considered the capital of the Highlands, near the infamous Loch Ness), and all the way up to the more isolated John O’ Groats, the Shetland Islands and Stornoway. If you’re a fan of the outdoors, there may not be anywhere better in the UK for truly experiencing the great British outdoors. Being more isolated doesn’t correlate to a less social experience, generally, it’s quite the opposite!

In terms of tertiary centres, in the North of Scotland, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary is the main specialist hospital, being a major trauma centre, offering nearly every specialty (excluding heart and liver transplants). It also has on its grounds a dedicated paediatrics and dedicated maternity hospital.

Scotland is one foundation school but split into 4 separate regions: East, North, South East & West. Most of the spots available are in the West (around Glasgow) & South East (around Edinburgh).

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Join The Facebook Group

You can Join the North Scotland Foundation School page here, and find the group for all Scotland Foundation trainee's here Plus the group for all UKFP 2022 trainee's here!

Foundation School Statistics For Scotland As A Whole

2021 F1 Places: 812
2021 F1 Applicants: 805
2021 Competition Ratio: 0.99
2020 Competition Ratio: 0.97
Below is an interactive bar chart displaying the competition ratios, lowest entry scores, and the number of posts over the past 5 years.
Please note that the 2021 data for lowest entry score is not yet available, we will update this graph when it is.

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How Does Scotland Compare To Other Foundation Schools?

Check out our article "What are the most competitive foundations schools?" for a full breakdown.

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Hospitals, Rotation Scores, CQC Ratings

In the chart below you'll find a list of hospitals attached to the North of Scotland Foundation School, and an average of their Rotation Scores from Messly’s Training Navigator. Each rotation is given a score out of 100, which is based on a weighted average of ratings given by Foundation Trainees in the 2021 GMC NTS. The national average Rotation Score is 62 for reference.

Colours correspond to the latest CQC rating of that hospital.

Disclaimer: Please note that hospitals are unscored when there are insufficient responses by Foundation Trainees to the GMC’s NTS survey.

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Need Help Ranking Your Foundation Programmes?

Rank your Foundation Programme rotations with confidence with Messly’s Training Navigator. See how rotations are rated by last year’s foundation trainees to make smarter decisions about where you’ll spend your Foundation Training.

You can use it to answer questions like:‍

👉  Which are the best-rated and worst-rated rotations in my Foundation School?
👉  How do the rotations compare for Workload, Learning and Satisfaction?
👉  Which is the best hospital for my favourite specialties?
👉  Within a hospital, which rotations are best-rated?

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