The Physician Specialty Recruitment Office is coordinating a national process for recruiting trainees into clinical pharmacology and therapeutics training programmes at ST4-level across all regions in England, Scotland and Wales with a post start date between 05/08/2026 and 31/12/2026; in the event that the specialty does not participate in the second round of recruitment, it is possible that posts could start up until April 2027.

Group 1 physician higher-training programmes require that trainees spend up to 50% of their time in general internal medicine. This includes undertaking the role of the Medical Registrar in the acute unselected medical on-call. This is a challenging role requiring both clinical and well-developed team management skills. Applicants should be aware of and be able to demonstrate these skills to the level outlined in the Internal Medicine Stage 1 curriculum at interview and from the commencement of their appointment should they be successful.

Applications are equally open to those who may, either from the outset or subsequently, wish to train less than full time or job share.

Please note that there is a strict application policy that applications cannot be accepted after the deadline.

When applying to this specialty in this recruitment round, you will not need to give preferences of particular posts, regions, rotations, etc. at the time of applying; just complete and submit an application for the specialty.

Should you be subsequently long/shortlisted for interview, you will be invited to give preferences of all posts available nationally at a later stage of the recruitment round.

All recruitment to this specialty in this round will be managed by the East of England region, who will coordinate all long/shortlisting of applications, host all interviews, and make offers on behalf of all participating regions.

All interviews will be conducted on an online format.

An applicant guide overviewing the process is available from the document library of the PHST Recruitment website.

Detailed information is contained throughout the website.

Substantive national training number (NTN) posts will be predominantly advertised in this round. Where available, locum appointment for training (LAT) posts are only recruited in Scotland and Wales.

Post number information will be published to the PHST Recruitment website as it is confirmed by each region. We aim to publish provisional information by the opening date for applications, although please note that numbers tend to increase during the round. Information can be accessed by referring to the ‘Interview dates & posts’ section of the specialty’s page on the website; accessed via the hyperlinks tab.

Completion of a substantive programme in this specialty will lead to a Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) or a Combined Programme Certificate of Eligibility for Specialist Registration (CESR CP).

Please follow the links below for information about salary scales in the four UK nations.

England: https://www.nhsemployers.org/topics-networks/pay-pensions-and-reward/medical-and-dental-pay-and-contracts

Northern Ireland: http://www.nimdta.gov.uk/recruitment/trust-hr-information/;

Scotland: http://www.msg.scot.nhs.uk/pay/medical/junior-doctors

Wales: http://www.wales.nhs.uk/nhswalesaboutus/workingfornhswales/payconditions/payandconditionsresources

Please see the hyperlinks tab for links to further information about the recruitment process, including areas such as: eligibility/entry criteria, the person specification, data from previous years, contacts, the long and shortlisting processes as well as information regarding the interview.

It is stipulated in the person specification that certain criteria must be completed by the ‘advertised post start date’. In this round the date is 5 August 2026. If you are not able to complete the outstanding area by this date your application will not be able to progress.

An applicant’s guide is available for download from the PHST Recruitment website. This guide, alongside the website content, should address most queries.

All applicants who are currently undertaking a UK core programme which is an acceptable entry pathway for the specialty will not be required to provide any evidence of achievement of core capability at the application stage.

All other applicants will be required to do so, and to upload this evidence to Oriel, so as to allow this to be submitted alongside their application.

This will either be in the form of an ARCP document for those who have already completed a relevant core training programme, or using the relevant alternative documentation specified on the person specification for all other applicants.

More information on demonstrating core capability can be found at sources accessed via the hyperlinks tab.

Group 1 specialty - this specialty’s programmes start at ST4-level, require the full three years training in internal medicine training (IMT) or equivalent and all programmes will dual specialise with general internal medicine.