Royal Society of Medicine Career Handbook: FY1 - ST2 PDF
Preview Royal Society of Medicine Career Handbook: FY1 - ST2
ROYAL SOCIETY of MEDICINE Career Handbook FY1 ST2 This page intentionally left blank ROYAL SOCIETY of MEDICINE Career Handbook FY1 ST2 By Muhunthan Thillai and Kaji Sritharan RSM Books First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Hodder Arnold, an imprint of Hodder Education, a division of Hachette UK, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH http://www.hodderarnold.com © 2011 Thillai and Sritharan All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means with prior permission in writing of the publishers or in the case of reprographic production in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright licensing Agency: Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Hachette UK’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Whilst the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of going to press, neither the author[s] nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. In particular, (but without limiting the generality of the preceding disclaimer) every effort has been made to check drug dosages; however it is still possible that errors have been missed. Furthermore, dosage schedules are constantly being revised and new side-effects recognized. For these reasons the reader is strongly urged to consult the drug companies’ printed instructions before administering any of the drugs recommended in this book. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-853-15927-5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Publisher: Caroline Makepeace Editorial Manager: Francesca Naish Production Controller: Kate Harris Cover Design: Helen Townson Project managed by Naughton Project Management Cover image © Tim Vernon, LTH NHS Trust/Science Photo Library The logo of the Royal Society of Medicine is a registered trade mark, which it has licensed to Hodder Arnold. Typeset in 10/14 pt Serifa-Roman by MPS Limited, a Macmillan Company Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd What do you think about this book? Or any other Hodder Arnold title? Please visit our website: www.hodderarnold.com For my parents. My father, who taught me mathematics on our Dining room table in Westaway Court, and my mother, who passed onto me her love of books. Muhunthan Thillai Jersey Acknowledgements We are extremely grateful to Dr Andrew Papanikitas for his contribution to Chapter 3: Getting through the Foundation Years and Chapter 5: Specialty Training Application forms, as well as his authorship of Chapter 7: GP Recruitment. Foreword During my own time at medical school I went to a conference in Switzerland. I made friends with a bunch of Norwegian medics who suggested that we climbed a nearby mountain together, which sounded like a terrifi c idea. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I soon leaned that Norwegians run up mountains like lesser mortals pop out to get some milk. Well, I suppose they had more mountains to practice on than I had. However I made it, and I think I managed to pretend not to be completely exhausted by trying to keep up. And the view from the top was worth it. I would have done a jolly sight better had I understood from the outset what was involved, and if I had been better prepared. A career in medicine takes longer than climbing a mountain. Otherwise the same principles apply. Determination and hard work are taken for granted. But preparation will score much better than blundering along. Understanding the map of the terrain and how best to jump the hurdles really is a good idea. The good news is that the view is immensely worthwhile at all parts of the journey, and you will make some terrifi c friends along the way. Medicine is a demanding career, but most of those who go for it would not be satisfi ed with less. Hippocrates wrote that the ‘art [of medicine] is long but life is short’. I suspect he wrote that when he was old. When you start out a professional lifetime probably seems long, and the journey within medicine to the summit of a career may seem lost in the clouds. But the frantic pace of a medical career will see the years passing by quickly enough. We only have one shot at life, and one shot at a medical career – it’s not a dress rehearsal. Medicine is a mountain range with so many possibilities, so many different peaks and viewpoints. Thillai and Sritharan have drawn up a superb set of maps for the medical climber. There is not one right way to do it, but for any one medic there will be better ways and also less successful ways. This book should be a terrifi c help to ensure that you make the most of your one shot at this fantastic career. Some of the individual pathways in medicine seem very different now from a decade ago, never mind when I qualifi ed at the end of the 1970s. MMC has represented a big shift in the training culture. It is far from a perfect system, however it has settled down a lot from its turbulent early days, and is certainly stable enough to believe that now is a good time to be drawing up the sort of maps that Thillai and Sritharan have given us here. We may well see changes in the F1 and F2 years following Professor John Collins’ excellent and thought provoking report into the Foundation years1. But there will always be changes, for in medicine change is here to stay. However there are also some constant principles that will determine your success. Hard work, applied intelligence and moral courage always show through in the end. There is no easy drive up these mountains. If there is one other thing you should attend to at every point of your own climb that is the voice of the patient. Medicine offers this wide mountain range of different possibilities. As an intellectual discipline it encompasses both high end science and the humanities. As an activity it spans the highly academic and the very practical. One thing should hold the whole thing together and that is our concern for patients. Medics form a wide and diverse community, a community with space for many different personalities and skills, but with a shared aim. Unless we do this climbing for the good of our patients then we do it with no morally valid aim. If we put the interest of the patient at the centre not just because the GMC say we should, but because we ourselves must, then the view really is terrifi c. We will go through diffi cult times, and of course we will witness some diffi cult, even terrible, events happening to our patients. If we know we are doing this for a worthwhile purpose, a purpose that has a thread of moral value running through it even when we are too tired to remember this, then we have every reason to believe that we really are a part of the greatest profession in the world. I hope you are able to use this book to make the most of the opportunities before you. And I wish you every success, both professionally and personally, in the years ahead. David Misselbrook Dean Royal Society of Medicine 1 Collins J. Foundation for Excellence. An evaluation of the Foundation Programme. Medical Education England, October 2010. Contents Introduction x 1 How to choose your specialty 1 2 The foundation years 19 3 Getting through the foundation years 40 4 Core and specialty training 59 5 Specialty training application forms 74 6 Specialty training interviews 99 7 GP recruitment 122 8 Postgraduate exams 130 9 Audit 145 10 Publications 163 Index 179
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