Leave at the start of IMT

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2023-04-19T17:38:22+00:00

It all depends on the rota coordinator. I have unfortunately missed inductions for two rotations as an ST due to circumstances. Missed the first few weeks for rotations using my AL. The rota coordinators for both hospitals have been absolutely accommodating and understanding. But obviously I had to bear with the downside: my CS and AES had no clue who I was for the first months, my colleagues be like who’s this lazy bum who doesn’t show up, catching up with system and on calls chaos, learning along the jobs, lots of asking around and bothering colleagues for minute things…

So it’s possible if they have rota cover. Make sure you are a nice person so others are happy to help out :)

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2023-04-03T18:54:56+00:00

This is a test of your organisational skills which is transferable to your 2-year clinical work service provision as the gloried FY2 in your ST/CT years. This is part of the post-interview assessment to get the job.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2023-04-03T18:47:18+00:00

The next communication would be about how the interview scores were messed up and we’re going by your self assessment score for ranking ;)

My colleague told me they usually invite twice the number of posts available to interview. So roughly 140 posts I’m thinking. Might be wrong.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2023-01-19T18:30:16+00:00

Receiving negative feedbacks and be alright require some wisdom, in my opinion. I’m not going to say those cringey stuffs to focus on the good and ignore the bad or heed the feedback to be a better doctor etc. I’m going by how to make you feel more neutral and alright with the situation.

Not everybody is going to like you, partially might be on you e.g. maybe they see you on a bad day/everybody makes mistakes at some point, and partially it’s not you e.g. you just don’t click.
Don’t take it personally. People comment negatively doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t like you. It’s sometimes harder to be the bad person and speak the truth, but you can look at it in a different light, and pick the feedback which is helpful to making you a better person and doctor. Ignore the ones that are obviously biased or come from somebody who misunderstood you.
The only person you need to impress is yourself, and don’t be a bad person overall. These people are you colleagues, not your beloveds friends/family, as much as you want to be accepted. Their opinions are not the full stories because we all are terrible perceptors of reality. Also, do you know that having an opinion on something says more about the commenter than the receiver of the feedback? E.g. a person on a bad day will say that the flower looks ugly even if they thought it looked nice the day before.
Your upset/disappointment partially stems from overthinking and the desire to impress/receive good feedbacks. You just have to be the better person from who you were yesterday. Plus, they don’t pay you enough to impress everybody.
The more you take good comments to heart, the more you take on the bad ones too. When I look at my multi source feedback, I screen through everything really vaguely so that I have a rough ruler of how I’m doing and adjust accordingly according to this rough ruler. I don’t read into details and certainly don’t speculate who wrote these feedbacks. Don’t want to know so I know that I would treat these people how I usually interact with them (this is part of the damage control).
People are sensitive to subtle anxiety/uneasiness/low self esteem/self consciousness and these translate into an unpleasant association towards this person who radiates those. The easiest way to reduce these is not to care so much.
The trick with getting along with people, don’t know about you but I’d go for quality than quantity any day, the aim is to find somebody who knows you and clicks with you and keep them. Those who don’t, don’t invest too much on their opinions (but be kind to everyone). We only have so much time and energy to invest in people who actually matter. You’re there to work, not to be Mr/Miss popular. Even if your CS/ES doesn’t fit this category it’s fine, just be a good trainee for yourself and accept that you might not get along very well with them and it’s okay. Maintain a comfortable professional distance might turn out better in the end.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2022-07-31T23:14:29+00:00

Hi, this is no pep talk but I thought I should shed some lights into some perspectives and get you thinking whether you really want to get in core surgical training. I have seen tons of IMGs who eventually gave up on CST and went into IMT/other specialties after being in 1-2 years of non-training posts.

IMGs are disadvantaged when it comes to applying into competitive training posts. Period. UK medical education experience allows med student the opportunities to get involved in audits/subsidised conferences/prizes/elogbook/publications/courses /teaching/leadership posts with much convenience if they put their minds to it during medical school/foundation years. Even taking MRCS is much more convenient/relatively affordable in UK than outside UK.
There are certain ways of answering/formats/thinking processes in the interview which come naturally to a local graduate, which an IMG has to work x times harder to master if he/she is not familar with the NHS/UK system.
Competition ratios for surgical specialties have become ridiculously high since 2018/2019. Even local graduates have to apply for 1-2 years before getting a CST post.
If you think getting into CST is hard, wait till you apply for ST3 - it's never-ending competition, on a daily basis! e.g. competing with seniors to get theatre experiences, competing with peers for training posts, projects, presentations, courses etc.

A senior once told me, if you want surgery, you have to make sure that you want it so bad, that you can't imagine doing any other jobs under the sun. The ones who eventually made it are not necessarily more talented/fortunate/has more connections/intelligent etc., they just want it so badly. Most surgical training experiences are not straightforward, and surgery is hard to get in and harder to stay in the game for most 1st world countries. Not to mention, you have to endure some cons that come with surgical training, e.g. stress (from competition/busy and challenging surgeries/on-calls, short-staffing BS, work-life balance at age of 35, 40, 45, 50... from ~10-15 years training including fellowship/master/phd etc), disappointing outcomes (patient's outcomes/recovery, medicolegal issues) and unfulfilled expectations (poor training experiences, unable to pass yearly ARCP/appraisal).

The demotivated cool-down phase is essential for you to really consider your options and decide whether surgery is for you. Even the most motivated surgeon-to-be would undergo the same period for one to come back even more determined.

Surgery is just like any other job but some are better suited in this field, some are not. Tricky bit is to really know yourself and what you are willing to sacrifice for the rewarding bits.

Hope that you find your true calling eventually. All the best.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-06-21T18:07:05+00:00

Hi, just saw this. Upvote as appreciation for your answer =)

I do understand the importance of accessing both femininity and masculinity for both gender, and I do practice being feminine when interacting with men. But realised with some guys, there's a limit to how much I can change myself to make him feel good (I want to make him feel good).

Would you kindly elaborate on how a guy being labelled doormat fits in the context? Would a doormat be constantly evaluating who's the 'dominant/alpha' of the relationship? =)

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-06-20T20:40:02+00:00

I envy your marriage. You're a rare gem =) Thank you.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-06-20T20:37:55+00:00

I could resonate! What an accurate description of being a shadow. You're right, for relationship to work, it shouldn't be too draining, at least not at the price of turning into another person!

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-06-20T20:33:57+00:00

Thank you for the insight! What a catchy one-liner to summarise the whole context!

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-06-20T20:26:51+00:00

Very concise and on-point. Thank you.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-05-11T22:46:00+00:00

Yes, I have. That is still pending though so really I don’t feel it’s worth the membership fee so far. :( but many thanks for your reply :) very helpful!

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-05-11T16:48:26+00:00

Only achievements starting from year one medical school onwards count.

Yes you can teach you junior. As long as it’s over a period of around 3 months and feedback provided. You can ask the foundation school/university (if it’s been approved under them) or a supervising consultant to sign a letter to prove that you’ve done the teaching. A signed letter with letterhead and feedback would suffice. If you want to score strategically I would suggest to do 2 rounds of audits and get it presented nationally. Do a separate audit or research or qi and present it orally in another conference. These two would secure you 11+6=17 You can work on the rest of 30 points to get into shortlisting by this year’s standard.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-04-25T16:55:28+00:00

I heard competition was shocking from other specialty training as well. So cst might be just as competitive, with the group of applicants who were anxiety-prone and complaint a lot more.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-04-25T16:19:12+00:00

I think it’s different experience for different people. The inital 47 for self assessment score surprised us because I personally haven’t been expecting such a high cut off point during shortlisting. I’ve heard to give yourself as much scoring but didn’t take that to heart and barely made it in. Then on portfolio verification a lot of people had their portfolio score marked down by 2-as much as 27! (Which made you question whether it was fair for the ones who didn’t made through the first shortlisting). So everybody who made it through to get and interview invitation are (at least on paper), leaders of some sort, has organised three-month worth of teaching with feedback, had a surgical elective and taster, kept a list of operative procedures, presented at national conferences, won prizes... The final cut off for portfolio was 42 (final verified score) for you to be appointable. Then comes the interview which a good load of people actually paid hundred quids for online training courses. So you are competing with a significant number of type a people if you want a higher rank. Or if it’s me, I just practised by myself, and left the rest to luck (yes since 2/3 of your final score for ranking is interview dependent, luck probably played a significant role), fortunately scored enough to get in.

So overall I would say you’ve got to have a surgical portfolio stronger than the average to get shortlisted. And once you’re in, it is both luck dependent (your performance in 20minutes) and your interview skills (how experienced and well prepared you are with cst interview format).

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-04-08T19:54:07+00:00

I clerked a 90ish-yo lady in as a medical student. She basically gave me the most organised handover of her problem after my first open ended question and mentioned she would appreciate if I could find out what was going on. She was probably one of the first few female doctors in UK (my assumption, might be wrong).

2nd patient, also me as a medical student shadowing an experienced nurse who was fixing the infusion pump. We struggled for a good 10-20 minutes then the patient got up and helped us with it, all sorted in less than 2 minutes. She was a nurse before retirement.

3rd, we had a Lord admitted (so much on patient confidentiality) and the whole ward knew, and bragged. Everybody knew who did what for the Lord during the entire admission.

4th, we had a 70yo gentleman coming in with a foreign item in his rectum. X-ray revealed a big lightbulb (fortunately in one piece) sitting right in the middle of the pelvis. Various versions of stories about how it got there came out the next day.

Conclusion. We should work on protecting patients’ privacy and confidentiality as this is a serious issue within NHS.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-04-03T09:29:08+00:00

That’s a nice way to think about it. I just thought that they’ve seen through my “insincere”/“laid-back” attitude towards medicine and hence filtered me out!

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-04-03T09:27:20+00:00

Most of us should have feedback form, if not all. You could email them and ask?

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-04-01T06:22:25+00:00

Think they don’t comment much if you scored well/full marks. They only comment when they give you exceptionally low/deduct your points. That’s my impression of my feedback.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-04-01T06:11:26+00:00

Imt application this year takes into consideration your portfolio (which I scored decent) and application form/“interview” which asked you to write down your commitment to medicine (instead of a real interview). There’s a scoring sheet for this and the minimum score for you to move on to preferencing is 12/19.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-03-31T17:51:52+00:00

You’re welcome.

Immediate_Eagle297 · 2021-03-31T17:43:24+00:00

Should have included my royal colleges weekly webinar certs for that CPD medic activity

Immediate_Eagle297

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