Community guidelines
Draft for solicitor review, 1 October 2026. Not legal advice and not yet in force. Text in [square brackets] is a placeholder or a question for the solicitor.
TraineeTrust reviews are about jobs, not people. Write what the post was like for a doctor at your grade, using facts and your own honest opinion. These guidelines apply to every review, every edit, and every institution response. They are part of our Terms of use.
The short version
- Write about the job: workload, rota, teaching, support, training, facilities.
- Never name or describe an individual, even without a name.
- Never include anything about a patient.
- Do not make allegations of wrongdoing. Take serious concerns to the channels at the end of this page.
- Say what happened, then what you thought of it.
What a good review looks like
| Instead of | Write |
|---|---|
| "Management don't care about NCHDs." | "The on-call room had no bed, and it was not fixed during my six months." |
| "Dr X is a bully." | "Juniors did not feel able to ask for help overnight." (or use the score, and the channels below) |
| "Worst rota in the country." | "Rota arrived four days before I started, and swaps had to go through two people." |
| "Teaching is a joke." | "Protected teaching was scheduled weekly, but I could attend about one session in four because of ward cover." |
| "The SpR on nights was useless." | "Registrar cover at night was shared with another hospital, so it could take 30 minutes to get a senior review." |
Strengths, Weaknesses and Good to know are all optional. Each one, if you use it, is 50 to 600 characters.
Not allowed
1. Named or identifiable people
No names, initials, nicknames or titles that point to a person ("Prof", "the head of department", "the clinical director", "the only female consultant", "the SpR on nights", "the new consultant from the UK"). In a small department a role alone can identify someone, so moderators also remove role descriptions that point to one person.
This applies to colleagues, managers, nurses, administrators, other trainees and yourself.
2. GP trainers
In a GP practice, write about the practice: list size, clinics, tutorial time, out-of-hours arrangements, facilities. Do not describe the trainer's behaviour, teaching style or personality, even without a name. Teaching and senior support scores at a practice are pooled across reviews before they are shown.
GP practice reviews are shown from the first one, and most practices have one trainee at a time, so your practice may be able to tell that a review is yours. Write only what you would be comfortable with them knowing came from you.
3. Patient information
No details of any case, patient, age, condition, date or event that could point to a patient, however anonymised it seems to you. A breach puts the patient's privacy and your own registration at risk.
4. Sensitive personal information
No information about anyone's health, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, pregnancy, trade union membership or similar, including your own. If your own circumstances affected your experience, describe the job ("no flexibility to change on-call nights at short notice"), not the reason.
5. Allegations of wrongdoing
No statements that a person or institution acted illegally, negligently, fraudulently or unsafely, and no accounts of specific incidents ("bullying by", "covered up", "an incident in March"). You can still score Wellbeing and team environment, which asks whether you could ask for help without negative consequences. Serious concerns should go to the channels below, which can investigate and which protect you.
6. Interpersonal conflict
No accounts of a disagreement or bad relationship with one person. A single relationship tells the next doctor little about the job.
7. Things that are not your own experience
Write only about a post you worked in yourself, in the year you give. No second-hand stories, rumours or reviews written for someone else.
8. Abuse, spam and links
No insults, profanity, threats, hate speech, advertising, contact details or links.
9. Attempts to identify a reviewer
No speculating about who wrote a review, in a review or in an institution response.
10. Conflicts of interest
Do not review a department you manage or have a financial stake in. Do not coordinate reviews with others to move a score.
When reviews show
- Hospitals and other departments: a department's reviews (a specialty at a site) are shown only once it has at least [3]. This stops a department guessing that one review came from the doctor who just left.
- GP practices: reviews are shown from the first one, with the safeguards in rule 2.
How moderation works
- When you submit, an automated check highlights sentences that may break these rules and suggests a rewrite. You can edit, or submit anyway and a person will decide.
- During the pilot a moderator reads every review with text before it is published, usually within 5 working days.
- The moderator publishes it, asks you to edit it, publishes it with a sentence removed, or rejects it, and tells you why and which rule applies. Moderators never rewrite your words.
- We may release reviews in batches after a changeover, so a review cannot be linked to the one doctor who just left.
- Other members who worked in the same post can mark a review "matches my experience".
- Anyone can report a published review. See the Complaints and takedown process.
Strikes
| Breach | What happens |
|---|---|
| First breach | Warning, and the content is edited out or rejected |
| Second breach within 12 months | Review posting suspended for [90] days |
| Third breach within 12 months | Account closed |
| Fabricating a review or impersonating someone | Account closed at once and all its reviews removed |
You are told each time, with the reason, and can ask for a second look.
Institution responses
Institution accounts are not offered during the pilot. When they are, a verified institution account can post one public response under any review of its posts. Responses follow every rule above. They should say what has changed or give context ("A second on-call room opened in 2027"). They must not try to identify or discredit the reviewer.
Where serious concerns belong
If you experienced or saw bullying, harassment, discrimination or a patient-safety risk, TraineeTrust is not the place to publish it, because we cannot investigate and it could expose you. These channels can act, and some give you legal protection:
- Your hospital's NCHD lead, clinical tutor or HR department
- A protected disclosure under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 (as amended in 2022), to your employer, a prescribed person (such as HIQA or the Medical Council), or the Office of the Protected Disclosures Commissioner
- Your training body (for example ICGP, RCPI, RCSI, CAI, College of Psychiatrists of Ireland)
- The Medical Council
- The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO)
- Practitioner Health Matters Programme, for your own health and wellbeing
[Solicitor and team: confirm the list and links before launch.]