Infectious Diseases

Article Author: Dr Katharine Relph is a registrar in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine

Infection doctors deal with all aspects of infection, from patient-facing ward, clinic, and consult work through to telephone advice, laboratory liaison, infection control and liaison with public health.

Infectious Diseases is a constantly evolving specialty, with new pathogens emerging and the epidemiology of existing diseases changing with global travel and climate change. This is reflected in the emphasis on continued learning and knowledge sharing, with many learning opportunities every week. 

Laboratory bench training is a totally different aspect of medicine. You get to understand how the laboratory works, how to use it most effectively, and how to troubleshoot when things go wrong. 

I enjoy interacting with the wide range of patients, from returning travellers and refugees to people who inject drugs. There’s something very satisfying about narrowing down a differential diagnosis through comprehensive history taking and targeted testing. I also really like the fact that almost all of the infections we see have effective treatment leading to cure or suppression. 

Infectious Diseases, Microbiology and Virology are no longer stand-alone specialties – everyone will have a dual CCT. You can either do ID as a Group 2 specialty with Medical Microbiology (MM) or Medical Virology (MV) (recruited after 2 years of IM Stage 1 or 3 years of ACCS-IM); or you can do Infectious Diseases as a Group 1 specialty with Internal Medicine Stage 2 (IM) (recruited after completion of IMS1 or ACCS-IM). 

All trainees complete two years of Combined Infection Training which involves clinical infection experience in an ID unit, infection-related outpatient clinics, laboratory and clinical work in microbiology and virology, and infection consult rounds. After that there are 2 years (ID/IM) or 3 years (ID/MM or ID/MV) of higher infection training (HIT). 

There are also a limited number of posts in Tropical Medicine (TM). Like ID, this must be paired with IM/MM/MV. Training includes an indicative 12 months’ HIT in a resource-poor tropical setting, and at least 12 months of training must be in a UK based Tropical Medicine Centre (Liverpool, London, Birmingham).