Medical and Dental

We are able to support medical elective placements for students not from Plymouth Medical School. These placements can only take place during July and August, when Plymouth Medical School students are not on placement at Derriford Hospital.

We are currently reviewing the process for 2026. This form is designed to capture Expressions of Interest from individuals or departments who would like to organise these placements for 2026. We will contact you in January 2026 to confirm the process and provide guidance on how to proceed.

Please note the following:

• Medical students wishing to undertake an elective with us must have prior support from the relevant service line before applying.

• We can only support students who are not from Plymouth Medical School during the period when Plymouth students are not on placement (end of July/start of August), for a maximum of 4 weeks.

• The administrative fee for elective placements is £75 per week, payable before the start of the placement. A non-refundable deposit of £100 (or £75 for a one-week placement) must be paid upon acceptance of your elective placement offer.

• Elective students are responsible for arranging their own accommodation and living arrangements for the duration of their placement.

• Current UKVI guidance stipulates that elective placements must be arranged via a UK higher education institution. As Derriford Hospital is an NHS Trust and not a higher education institution, we can unfortunately only accept UK nationals for these medical elective placements at this time.

If you would still like to submit an Expression of Interest, please complete the form below.  

Fill in the Medical Electives 2026 - Expression of Interest (EOI) form

We are a teaching hospital and the main site for teaching students from Plymouth University faculty of health and Peninsula Medical School. We seek to appoint clinicians with a commitment to undergraduate and postgraduate education. 

All our senior clinicians at UHP are expected to be advocated for all of our students, including medical, nursing, radiography and physician associates, and engage teaching as part of their working lives. In most departments additional medical school sessions will be included in job plans.  

Additional funded opportunities to be involved with teaching are available to all senior clinicians which may include becoming an academic or pastoral tutor as well as senior roles in the medical school.

International Medical Graduates (IMGs) are an invaluable part of our Trusts workforce and greatly contribute to the diverse teams we have within the hospital. We recognise that transitioning into a different healthcare system presents unique educational and pastoral challenges.   

As the Trust we are continuously improving our support to IMGs from our initial point of contact, to when you join us, and throughout your career. From the point of job offer, the Medical Workforce and Education team will send new colleagues a series of welcome emails, highlighting the support available prior to, and upon arrival in Plymouth.  

Once you’ve started with us you will benefit from an enhanced induction and access to a range of introductory training sessions to help you familiarise yourself to working within the UK, Plymouth and our Trust. 

We currently host 164 Foundation Programme placements at UHP and continuously plan for expansion of our programme, offering innovative training opportunities such as Diving Disease and Research and Public Health. We would be delighted to welcome you to our team as you embark upon your postgraduate training. 

UHP are the Lead Employer for the Southwest Imaging Training Academy, the only purpose-built facility of its type in the world. This bespoke facility has been created with the specific purpose of Radiology training and it provides a truly outstanding environment within which to learn. It has been designed from scratch, blending established traditional small group teaching methods with state-of-the-art electronic and simulator technology. 

Recruitment to our postgraduate doctor in training posts takes place though NHS England Workforce, Training & Education Department. Find out more about Medical Speciality Recruitment. 

UHP`s Research strategy embeds high quality clinical trials and other well-designed research at the centre of core clinical care to make research everybody`s business. Clinicians coming to work at UHP can expect wholehearted support for their research ambitions, endorsed by the Trust Executive and Board and in line the GMC`s expectations for all doctors to be delivering research as part of routine care: Read Normalising research – Promoting research for all doctors

UHP supports the delivery of clinical trials and other clinical research across the breadth of our specialties and sites. We open >120 new studies a year, adding to an active portfolio of approximately 500 commercial and non- commercial clinical trials and other health research studies, across which we recruit approximately 4500 patients annually.  

We were identified as the highest recruiting “Large Acute Trust” in the UK to NIHR commercial portfolio trials in the NIHR league tables 2021/22.  

Our academic partner, University of Plymouth`s Faculty of Health provides a thriving research-positive environment, enabling integrative and collaborative work across six schools (Biomedical Science, Dentistry, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing & Midwifery and Psychology). The university`s Plymouth Institute of Health and Care Research (PIHR) is inclusive of all health research and can therefore enable personalised support to clinical researchers to enable their success.  

PIHR has a research income of approximately £10 million per annum with scientists and clinical-academics acting as chief investigators (CIs) or collaborators on all NIHR programmes, clinical fellowships, and a large number of UKRI and charity-funded projects.  

The University of Plymouth`s Derriford Research Facility is a state-of-the-art laboratory building, opened in 2017 and co-located on the hospital campus, providing modern and readily accessible basic science and translational capability and capacity. The constituent schools of the Faculty of Health hold Athena Swan Silver and Bronze awards, with a strong and unequivocal commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion and to maximising opportunities for female scientists and Early Career Researchers.  

UHPs clinical academic strategy, developed in partnership with UoP, focuses support on research active clinicians to grow the academic footprint of our local health ecosystem, in line with the Trust`s clinical identity as   

• the local acute hospital for our coastal community  

• an anchor institution (with Livewell SW) in the Integrated Care Partnership and 

• the Tertiary Centre & Major Trauma Centre for the whole Southwest Peninsula region.