Specialty specific guidance for Portfolio in Acute Internal Medicine

The Acute Internal Medicine (AIM) curriculum was published in July 2022. For a transition period, you can make a Portfolio application against the high level outcomes in either the new curriculum or the previous version.

This option is available until the transition deadline of 31 March 2024.

Specialty specific guidance

We’ve produced guidance documents for each version of the curriculum with the Joint Royal Colleges of Physicians Training Board.

How to apply

You can apply through your GMC Online account. When choosing your application specialty, please make sure you choose the curriculum version that you wish to be assessed against as the application structure is tailored to the above specialty specific guidance version.

2022 curriculum

Our standards for postgraduate medical curricula are Excellence by design and the framework for Generic professional capabilities. These help postgraduate medical training programmes focus trainee assessment away from an exhaustive list of individual competencies, towards fewer broad capabilities needed to practise safely from your first day as a consultant.

As a result, the 2022 physicianly curricula are outcomes based. This means trainees will be assessed against the fundamental capabilities required of consultants in the working week. These include the general skills which all doctors need to have as well as those needed to carry out all the specific day to day tasks undertaken by a consultant physician (Capabilities in Practice – CiPs).

The AIM curriculum is made up six Generic CiPs which are common to all physicianly specialties, eight clinical internal medicine CiPs and six Specialty CiPs unique to AIM.

In demonstrating these capabilities a successful applicant will be awarded specialist registration in AIM and General (internal) medicine.

Content shared between all physicianly specialties

There are six CiPs which are shared between all physicianly specialties:

  • CiP 1 - Able to function successfully within NHS organisational and management systems
  • CiP 2 - Able to deal with ethical and legal issues related to clinical practice
  • CiP 3 - Communicates effectively and is able to share decision making, while maintaining appropriate situational awareness, professional behaviour and professional judgement
  • CiP 4 - Is focused on patient safety and delivers effective quality improvement in patient care
  • CiP 5 - Carrying out research and managing data appropriately
  • CiP 6 - Acting as a clinical teacher and clinical supervisor

Clinical internal medicine content

There are eight clinical CiPs for internal medicine which are shared between all group 1 specialties:

  • CiP 1 - Managing an acute unselected take
  • CiP 2 - Managing the acute care of patients within a medical specialty service
  • CiP 3 - Providing continuity of care to medical inpatients, including management of comorbidities and cognitive impairment
  • CiP 4 - Managing patients in an outpatient clinic, ambulatory or community setting, including management of long-term conditions
  • CiP 5 - Managing medical problems in patients in other specialties and special cases
  • CiP 6 - Managing multidisciplinary team including effective discharge planning
  • CiP 7 - Delivering effective resuscitation and managing the acutely deteriorating patient
  • CiP 8 - Managing end of life and applying palliative care skills

Specialty specific content

  • CiP 1 - Managing Acute Medical Services
  • CiP 2 - Delivering alternative patient pathways including Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC)
  • CiP 3 - Prioritising and selecting patients appropriately according to the severity of their illness, including making decisions about appropriate escalation of care
  • CiP 4 - Integrate with other specialist services including Intensive Care, Cardiology, Respiratory and Geriatric medicine
  • CiP 5 - Managing the interface with community services including complex discharge planning
  • CiP 6 - Developing a specialty skill within several broad domains. These are clinical, academic, research or procedural skills.

Changes in assessment tools

There has been no change to the workplace based assessment methodology.

Changes in knowledge and skills

All JRCPTB specialties identified as group 1 will dual train in internal medicine (IM) and the IM learning outcomes have been embedded in the curriculum. This curriculum will train doctors that are specialists with generalist skills to manage the acute unselected take and care of acutely ill patients.

There is a new mandatory requirement to be competent in focused chest, abdominal and lower limb point of care ultrasound training.