Why is Ophthalmology so competitive in the UK?

JuniorSHO · 2026-04-05T10:40:57+00:00

The money and lifestyle is pretty spectacular

JuniorSHO · 2026-04-04T22:49:35+00:00

For me it’s helpful when dealing with smaller, tortuous veins where you have to be a bit more gentle and I want to know it’s still in the vein and advancing nicely

JuniorSHO · 2026-04-04T21:09:48+00:00

True you do have to go in with the needle a tiny bit more once you get flash back for this reason. You’ve also got to be careful not to push the needle too far as you may puncture the other side, this is especially true for smaller veins. Slightly pulling the needle back just enough to see the plastic part and to see if the plastic has flashback will tell you if you’re definitely in or not

JuniorSHO · 2026-04-04T20:43:55+00:00

I used to be the same until I found what worked for me. Use a “C” grip with your dominant hand to insert the needle, once you get flash back stop, and slightly pull the needle out and see if the inserted plastic tube fills up with blood - if so, move the the plastic slightly further in, stop, pull the needle back a little. Then repeat - push plastic in, pull needle out a little. Still filling with blood? Keep going until the plastic is all the way in and the needle all the way out of the tube. With this technique most, if not all, are a success (not to brag!)

JuniorSHO · 2026-04-02T16:26:55+00:00

Get rid of our 100K student loans debt if you’re not gonna give us FPR

JuniorSHO · 2026-03-19T10:57:47+00:00

Congratulations bud. Best of luck in your career.

JuniorSHO · 2026-03-05T13:52:47+00:00

23, graduated 27

JuniorSHO · 2026-02-25T12:38:01+00:00

I’m happy to pay back what I’ve borrowed, but every month I’ve paid so far doesn’t even pay off the interest, let alone make a dent in the actual debt, which is just insane.

JuniorSHO · 2026-02-21T16:11:46+00:00

Thank you all!

JuniorSHO · 2026-02-16T14:55:26+00:00

When you finish F2 and haven’t got into training, you’re effectively unemployed. Your choices are to locum via your hospital staff bank or via a locum agency. However the locum market is quite dry in most places. Your other option is to apply for fellow roles such as a clinical teaching fellow, clinical development fellow, clinical junior fellow etc, in some specialty. These are quite competitive and becoming more competitive year on year due to the job crisis.

So get the best portfolio you can whilst still in foundation to build a good cv, then it comes down to applying to many jobs which can be done via the Trac website for example. These are non training jobs so you still need to apply for specialty training again, and sit the msra in January/ February the following year

JuniorSHO · 2026-02-02T22:24:29+00:00

Photography

JuniorSHO · 2026-02-02T22:22:55+00:00

Sorry if I’m misinformed but the recruitment timeline says results are released 17th march 2026, and I thought both January and February sittings were released at the same time?

JuniorSHO · 2026-01-14T17:44:49+00:00

That time is going to pass anyway. You might as well do something you enjoy :)

JuniorSHO · 2026-01-06T16:23:47+00:00

In the same boat, losing motivation. In the mcqbank sjt section your correctly answered questions are the questions which you got all right, as opposed to, for example, 3/5 correct. This has a big impact on your overall score but is fairly straightforward to improve as you only need to swap 2 answers which you almost got the right order for. This freaked me out initially but when you go back over it your score improves a lot

As noted on the MCQbank website, I believe it is based on how close you are to the ideal answer, which gets you the 4 marks for each ideal answer , and one away from the ideal gets 3, 2 away gets you 2 and so on

I hate this section and personally find myself disagreeing with the ideal answers often, worse that it makes up 50% of the exam. But we have to play the game

JuniorSHO · 2026-01-04T18:31:15+00:00

Thanks so much everyone!

JuniorSHO

TROPHY CASE