Resources for doctors in difficulty, from the BMA

NHS’s Career Progression – new opportunity for Specialty Doctors and Associate Specialists (SAS doctors) to access resources for Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

BMA’s Becoming a doctor: entry in 2012

The Guardian’s Healthcare career options – Q&A

GMC’s FAQS for UK medical students

Preparing for medical training from RCPCH

Here’s a resource for medical students or professionals who have an ensuing interview for a course or for a job. The resource comes to you apparently from a person who has been there, done that. Discover the principles of communication well in your forthcoming interview. You can do so well as to ‘boss’ the entire medical interview. The service claims to offer personalised training too. Look up Medical Interview Preparation.

It is possible for you to look through videos and tutorials on the site, all related to interview preparation. Besides, there is a series of presentations that constitute an entire online medical interview training course.

Planning Your Medical Career: A Practical Guide (a pdf from the Foundation Programme of the NHS)
Planning your medical career - A guide to careers support (a pdf from London Deanery) FAQS for UK medical students from the General Medical Council UK
Modernising Medical Careers (a pdf from Mersey Deanery)

1.   MedRevise – Free medical revision for student doctors, that is neither too elaborate nor too brief. The site claims to be a ‘medicine revision wiki’.

2. Free revision notes for medical students a resource run by medical students for medical students.

3. Specialist material for MRCP candidates (for aspirants to Membership of the Royal College of Physicians)

4. Written and practical resources for current students prepare for finals exams.

5. Yoracle – free medical student online revision notes and clinical learning environment.

6. Professional medical education – final revision courses for medical students.

So go ahead and make use of these resources and come out with flying colours each time!

Teale Fenning Medical Education offers several courses for you to translate your medical knowledge and experience into points by focusing on the right technique
and approach to tackle the MRCOG exams. The Teale Fenning Medical Education MRCOG courses boast of a unique style  that helps candidates pass the Written and oral part of the Part II MRCOG exam.

With Memorable Medicine, besides getting free online medical training and revision, you can access free medical revision and interact with other aspirants. See what this aspirant says about the service – “I found this website to be a great revision tool for my surgery rotation (in 3rd year of medical school). With its videos, mnemonics and diagrams you can learn about the essential parts of surgical history-taking, investigations and features of various common surgical conditions without having to look through lots of different textbooks and websites. It makes learning easier and more fun, too!”

If you are looking for the training on medical emergencies, look up Emergency medical Training for first aid and many other online courses like CPR training, Appointed Person Emergency First Aid, HSE First Aid at work, Manual Handling for the Workplace.

These are the MMC principles for recruitment and training for medical professionals, as outlined in Modernising Medical Careers.

• MMC should have a fair, equitable and transparent recruitment basis
• specialty training should be programme based and designed to deliver nationally agreed standards
• where appropriate specialty training should begin with broadly based programmes
• educational progression for individuals should be assessed by an annual review of the documented acquisition of competencies and clinical and professional competency
• trainers and educational supervisors should be trained and supported to fulfil their wider role as educators, and assessors
• training programmes should be time limited, extensions associated with problems with educational progression should be restricted
• the satisfactory completion of training should be marked by entry to the specialist or general register
• completion of training demonstrates that a trainee has achieved the level of clinical and professional competency appropriate to allow appointment as a consultant or general practitioner principal or academic equivalent, and for independent clinical practice
• after entry to the specialist or generalist register, doctors will need access to continuing professional development to be able to respond to changes in clinical practice and allow for further professional development as well as revalidation, recertification and maintenance of professional regulation
• arrangements for postgraduate medical education and training should be flexible and facilitate movement into and out of training, and between specialty training programmes
• the provision of education and training will be underpinned by a commitment to provide less than full-time and other types training, where appropriate
• the availability of specialty training opportunities will be based on a formal analysis of the needs of the service
• trainees will be able to access career management support prior to and during specialty training

How important is career planning? See these 10 tips offered by medicalforum.com, and use this career audit questionnaire.

• the time you spend on planning gets repaid multifold – in results
• absence of career planning is the usual cause of many career dilemmas
• you need to plan career even when your career is well on track
• in times of crisis or quick decision needs – you need to know crisis management
• good career planning means you equip yourself to take the right decisions in the future
• the skill you need to improve for career planning will differ from your neighbour’s
• lack of a single important skill in career planning can hold back career progress
• your own career success definition is key to achieving success on your terms
• it’s futile to blame anyone or anything for your career situation
• you don’t need extra time for career planning – you need to simply divert ‘worry-time’, and ‘blame-time’

Several online course providers also enable what is called blended learning. They have packaged customized educational programs in the medical field, which includes both seminars and online courses.

When you choose such a provider, ensure that they indeed have wide experience and variety in online e-courses to include programmes for not only medical students, nurses and other health care professionals, foundation doctors, junior doctors who are working towards postgraduate exams, but also GPs and Consultants.

Understand that you will get the most efficient as well as financially meaningful learning solutions only when you are offered a combination of seminars and lectures along with individual online learning.

Here is one such provider who offers sufficient exam preparation material, multimedia modules and e-videos and also the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from the ‘Foundation Years Journal’. This provider’s databases equip you for UKCAT, GPST / GPVTS, MRCP Part 1, MRCP Part 2, MRCPsych, MRCS Part A1 and A2, MRCPCH Part 1, MRCPCH Part 2, FRCA Primary, Primary FRCR, PLAB Part 1, medical student and MRCOG.

One of them is the Career Development Award. Post-doctoral medical researchers interested in becoming an independent investigator can receive financial support for a period of as much as five years. In fact the MRC urges awardees to make full use of the five years’ financial assistance.

Within that period, you are allowed to train in alternate UK research centres, or within the UK industry or indeed at a suitable place abroad, so that you acquire broader skills and transferability.

For a set of FAQ’s (“Who can apply?”, “What is the tenure of the award?”, “What are the deadlines and submission details?”) and to understand all about the unique “MRC and Multiple Sclerosis Society training fellowship”, and to get to know about the other career improvement opportunities , visit the MRC fellowships pages.