Clinical Teaching Fellows: best of both worlds.

Clinical teaching fellow (CTF) posts have been established for a number of years, and offer structured opportunities for junior doctors on a specialty training programme, with an interest in medical education, to gain valuable experience in this area. I would like to argue that these posts allow the best of both worlds: medical education and clinical medicine. The number of posts is rising dramatically as medical schools realise the value of having motivated trainees delivering and developing the undergraduate curriculum, as well as providing trainees with invaluable education-related skills for use in their future careers.1 The posts involve taking time out of clinical training as out-of-programme experience (OOPE), which requires authorisation from the postgraduate deanery, to develop an interest in medical education. Institutional and geographical factors dictate how these posts are funded.