Applying for specialty training: top tips

A specialty trainee who was twice successful with specialty training applications, gives some advice to this year’s applicants based on her experience and those of colleagues.

Her advice, published in the BMJ Careers, includes :

- Establish your goal and the bottom line
- Organise your form - think in advance about how you will answer questions, sort out the certificates and job details, submit the application much ahead of the deadline etc.
- Prepare your portfolio
- Gather supporting documents
- Keep perspective

Source :"Applying for specialty training: top tips" BMJ Careers, 25 Nov 2009

Specialty training for doctors in England

Postgraduate medical training in the UK is changing, if you are considering postgraduate specialty training and seeking information on application to specialty training in England and related topics, the following documentations may help you get started with the process.


Information on the process and timetable for medical specialty training recruitment in 2010 is regularly updated on the Medical Specialty Training (England) website.

You can start by reading this BMJ article “Recruitment to medical specialty training (England) 2010” as a quick guide to the application process.

The followings aim to give F2 doctors an overview of the recruitment and application process :

Getting started

Planning your cv

Completing an application form

Preparing for the interview

Assessment centres

Preparing your portfolio

e-portfolios

Also useful :

Advise to doctors on making the most of an e-portfolio - BMJ article

Improving your chances of getting the dream job – BMJ Careers series Aug 2008

More than an interview to land the job - BMJ article Aug 2005

Writing CVs and handling job interviews - BMJ article Jun 2004

Improving your chances of getting the dream job

Want that job? Follow these tips published by the BMJ Careers.


The author writes " it’s not all about luck , there are concrete ways to improve your chances" of getting your dream job.

1). Medical CV writing skills
Tips on how to stand out from the crowd by focusing on the evidence with examples showing full range of skills that the prospective employers are looking for etc

2). Interview skills
Tips on knowing the questions, preparing your answers and questions to strengthen your interview and impress the interviewing panel etc

3). Presentation skills: 4 P's - plan, prepare, phrase, and project
Tips on how to deal with common difficult situations - interruptions, audience looks bored, audience not listening and talking, questions you can’t answer etc

4). Networking skills - more than just self promotion
Benefits of networking and how to approach it.

Hospital doctors' memory sticks threaten data security

Two doctors surveyed their colleagues at a teaching hospital in London and found that 92 out of 105 held unsecured memory sticks, 79 held confidential patient information but only 5 were password protected. The authors said this is a clear breach of data security, reported the BBC.

They claim that the findings reflect the lack of security across UK hospitals and beyond.

Although hospitals issue doctors with chip-and-pin cards to access NHS databases and patient records, many doctors increasingly rely on their own memory sticks to store patients data tradidtionally written in doctors' notebooks.

The DH said "any breach of patient security is unacceptable…...The NHS locally has legal responsibility to comply with data protection rules." The survey is published in today's Health Service Journal.

Mind your manners

An assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School said that medical education and postgraduate training should place more emphasis on teaching doctors good behavior that would enhance their relationship with patients. He said when dcotors deal with patients in a polite manner, patients have a satisfying experience.

Source:"Etiquette-Based Medicine" New England J of Medicine, 2008, 358(19):1988-1989 ( free f/t)

CME activities associated with positive job satisfaction

According to an article published in BioMedCentral in May 2007, participation in CME activities has been shown to be associated with positive job satisfaction and negatively with job stress.

As advances in information technology, coping with hugh amount of medical knowledge is a major challenge to most doctors, a follow up questionnaire study was carried out in 2004 involving 1005 Norwegian doctors to investigate their CME activities and their perceived ability of keeping themselves updated and their job satisfaction.

They found that Norwegian doctors spent less time on attending courses but more on medical reading, however both were regarded the most important sources of information. Those with 5 or more CME course days were significantly more likely to be able to obtain sufficient information for keeping updated in their daily work than those who had not attended courses. There was a strong positive effect of the number of hours spent per week on medical reading. They also found that high job satisfaction was strongly associated with doctors' perceived ability to obtain sufficient information to keep professionally updated.

The authors concluded that this "gives good reasons for recommending a high level of CME activities among doctors."

Source:"Doctors’ learning habits: CME activities among Norwegian physicians over the last decade" BMC Medical Education 2007, 7:10 ( free full text)

"When doctors become terrorists"

"Why should doctors not be terrorists?" asked Dr Simon Wessely, a professor of psychiatry at King's College London in a perspective article "When doctors become terrorists" published online on July 16 issue of the NEJM and in print August 16, 2007.

Dr Wessely writes about what has driven doctors to be terrorists in history and people's assumptions about terrorists and doctors. An interesting article that worths reading.

Also from The Times, July 4, 2007, an article "Could a doctor really be a bomber? Well, yes".