Study Leave

For more general information about study leave and the Leave Manager system, please see our main page (www.eastmidlandsdeanery.nhs.uk/policies/study_leave)

Leave Manager budget increases

In order to balance our desire to support junior doctors with the need to offer fair and equitable support to all of our junior doctors, the Postgraduate Dean has asked the Heads of Schools to review any requests that would take a doctor’s overall spend over £1000 for this academic year.

To be clear, this is not intended to restrict your access to study leave and financial support. The goal is to ensure that funding is being used appropriately and proportionately. We recognise that some specialties will require a greater proportion of the budget than others, and some curriculum stages will require a greater proportion of the budget than others; your Head of School will take these into account when reviewing your request.

How will I know that I’m going over/close to my budget threshold?

Any time you go to submit a leave request in Accent Leave Manager, you will see a bar showing your total and remaining budget amounts. Pay specific attention to the Remaining budget value, as this shows how much you have available to request (including estimates) before your budget will need increasing.

You can also check your budget at any time: once you've logged into your Leave Manager account, go to My Budgets (https://accent.hicom.co.uk/LeaveManager/Live/Web/MyBudgets/Index). Look for the current training year (this will normally be at the top of each section).

As a reminder, the study leave year runs from changeover date in August to the changeover date the following August except for programmes with nationally agreed start dates in September, where the leave year is September to September. This applies regardless of individual trainees’ progression dates.

The system will also prevent you adding expenses to your leave request that would take you over your current budget.

International Leave

In line with national policy agreed by NHSE Deans, one international conference/meeting, providing all other curriculum requirements are met, will be considered for each doctor in training for any one programme, which can be defined as Foundation, Core, Higher or otherwise every three years (so as not to disadvantage doctors on a run-through programme).

Requests to attend overseas study courses/conferences will only be considered in exceptional circumstances. Such circumstances include:

• for the presentation of significant research findings from within an NIHR recognised academic clinical fellowship or clinical lectureship
• for the presentation of research undertaken as part of a clinical training programme
• where the training course is not available in the UK
• where the course or activity is part of the college curriculum or guidelines on required training
• where the course is set out as a mandatory requirement of college training to reach the required qualification to practice

If attending an international opportunity is evidenced to be cheaper than a UK alternative/equivalent, then the international opportunity will usually be approved and would not count as the one occurrence above.

The course/conference must provide a clearly stated curriculum outcome and there must be a documented discussion with the ES about the clear need of the course/conference to meet curriculum requirements. A report/evaluation covering the entirety of the leave may be requested from you after attendance.

Please note that there are restrictions on the expenses that will be supported. Please see "What expenses can I claim for international leave?" in the FAQs below for more information. If you wish to fund a period of international study leave by other means, your ES should still ensure the activity aligns to the curriculum or personal development plan. This must be the case for any period of international Study Leave irrespective of how it is funded.

How to apply

Please complete the below form to apply for international leave and/or budget increases. Alternatively, follow the link here or scan the QR code on your phone to be taken directly to the form.

Once you've submitted the form, you'll receive an email confirmation and summary from microsoft@powerapps.com; you may wish to add this email as a contact to prevent the confirmation being filtered to your junk/spam folder.

Please note that the request form below is for a budget increase/support for an international leave request only only. Once you submit a request on Leave Manager this will still need to be agreed by your rota approver and, if this is an exception request, this will still need to be reviewed by your TPD. Requests are forwarded weekly (usually on a Wednesday) to the Heads of School and we allow for at least a week for a decision to be provided from the date of the request being forwarded. Please ensure to request one activity per form.