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Thanks for attending to talk. Um This is just the first talk and the application to radiology series hosted by Ir Juniors. And um thankfully, Doctor Jim Zon has kindly agreed to present this talk on an introduction to academic radiology and how to apply for an AC F. Um So looking forward to it being a really great talk and from having listened to Jim's talks before, they've been very engaging and really good to listen to. So um I'll just pass it over on to Jim. Thank you very much Taha for that kind introduction, er worrying that you have been to some talks before. So thanks for organizing this and for having me and thanks everyone for attending. So um like Taha, I'm a trainee based in Leeds. I'm in my final year and um I've been involved with some academic endeavors during my training. So basically the aim of this talk, which is entitled academic Radiology, but I'm obviously still on that path down that academic radiology journey. But hoping to share some personal insights about how I've, you know, got to the stage where I am talk about the academic Clinical Fellowship program, some tips on applying for this program and also discussing the pros and cons of considering potential academic career. The talk will definitely not take up the full session. So I want to leave plenty of time for questions. So please just put questions in as I go along with the talk. So I'm based in Leeds. You can see here, this is from the clockwise, you can see Saint James's Hospital, which is one of the biggest tertiary centers in Europe. And then the University of Leeds, which is the academic center that we're affiliated with. And we're also quite a big oncology center. So you'll soon see that a lot of the research that I'm involved with is centered around oncological interventions. So the re of the talk given to me given to me by Ir Juniors is to give them for an introduction to what academic training and radiology is like, talk about the AC F talk about the benefits and drawbacks of training as an academic radiologist. I'll share some personal insights, talk about the day to day work, which is never the same and always very varied. We talk about the application process um and how you can aim to have a successful application which also overlaps to some degree with the general radiology, train number applications. And throughout the talk, share some personal insights and have a Q and A session at the end. So I started my training in medical school in Scotland in Edinburgh. And I was one of these people who, you know, never really considered a career in radiology early on. I just simply wasn't aware of the specialty. It was never featured very much in our training program and in lectures. So, um Edinburgh being quite a traditional university with, you know, dissection and the Royal College of Surgeons there, I was very much mentored early on by people who are quite surgically minded. So I thought I wanted to be a surgeon and it wasn't until at the end of med school when I had some time to do my elective, which was at Columbia Medical Center in New York was I first exposed to radiology and intervention, radiology. And again, the work that was being done at Columbia was not things I was aware of treatments that I knew were existed at the time. And, you know, the first project I was involved with was looking at liver radioembolization, which is a procedure where you can get access into the hepatic arteries and the arteries, supplying tumors in the liver. And you can deliver radioactive beads directly into the liver to treat liver tumors. And so this was obviously a way to treat people who had liver cancer, who maybe weren't operable, couldn't have surgery because of comorbidities or for other reasons. And they could have these potentially, um you know, life changing therapies which give them extra years of their life quality of life. And potentially some patients could also be bridged to curative therapies and this open hole, you know, area in my mind of, you know, opportunity to do much more image guided treatment. That was my first exposure to research and also to radiology. And then I ended up going back to leeds to do um an academic foundation post which I think now there's a rebadged of of these programs effectively with the academic foundation posts. In your two years, you had one of your six rotations, which was a research rotation to give you a bit more time. But I ended up back in leeds completely for, you know, reasons not related to medicine. You know, I went there because I had some family members who are unwell and we had a family business and they needed an extra person to do deliveries for. So I ended up going back for personal reasons to leeds and I've been stuck here since. So I then after my foundation training, embarked upon radiology and radiology and research was always done, you know, hand in hand. But the research sort of came on the back burner at times and was done in my own time and time is something that will come up consistently because with things like the academic foundation program, the AC F and obviously, with doing potential phd S down the line, that is what gives you the time to really explore your research interest. And that's really important because it's just not achievable to work a full time clinical job and to do all the other research or extracurricular things that you're interested in. So when I started radiology, the area I was most interested in in terms of specialty was interventional radiology. I was really excited by the vast array of techniques we were able to use to treat patients using different types of imaging in a much more, much less invasive way. And obviously, you see direct benefits to patients. You're able to treat blood clots, open arteries to people's legs, stent people's aortas when they rupture, cure cancer. In some cases for patients who have tumors that you can ablate, which means to burn or freeze tumors. And this is an area that I was really interested in to try to get some early research experience. And just fortuitously, I ended up embarking on an AC F program. But in leeds, the AC F actually starts from ST three. So I'd had already done a bit of radiology, clinical training by then. And the AC F from ST three to ST five gave me 25% of my time integrated into my training for research. And I was able to use that time to again work on projects, get a few more publications under my belt. And inevitably, I used that as a stepping stone to then apply for a clinical research training fellowship, which effectively is funding to then fund three years of your time out to do a full time phd where you're still paid a salary, your sort of unb banded baseline reg salary. Uh, and it's three years out of your training to then pursue those academic interests. And I recently just completed my phd and I'm in my final year of interventional radiology training. And just again to highlight as I'm sure many of, you know, you know, intervention radiology is really an exciting field. And if you haven't considered this to date, then you really should. I think there's something in ir for all different types of medical doctors, doesn't matter what area or organ of interest you might want to do whether you want to be a neurosurgeon, a general surgeon, a urologist, you can do image guided procedures in all those organ systems. And you know, now radiologists are able to push the boundaries of what we're able to achieve in surgery medicine because of a lot of the technological development in our devices in A I to allow us to target lesions more accurately. And this is only going to expand further in your, you know, careers. And you know, we have augmented and virtual reality. Now, navigation devices which allow us to plan and treat tumors much more accurately. We have hybrid imaging. So traditionally, imaging has been anatomical, you know, we see normal anatomy being de four and we see physically a tumor there distorting normal anatomy and that's how we make a diagnosis usually. But now with hybrid techniques, using functional imaging techniques like pet and MRI, we can actually image biological processes, we can image the tumor environment and understand exactly what are the most active parts of the tumor we should be treating and understand what our therapies are doing to the tumor. And now radiology has become really central to management of patients with cancer because we can obviously get tissue accurately for oncologists to do you know gene assays and do lots of, you know immune assays. And also now we understand that when we treat a tumor in the setting where patients have metastatic tumors, it affects the whole immune system and the immune system is really vital to how your body manages cancer cells. So now there are options to do a local treatment to a cancer and that primes the immune system because you release some antigens that the body will pick up and then you can give the patient potentially some systemic chemotherapy or immunotherapy. And that might actually enhance the effect of that immunotherapy having done a an interventional treatment, for example. So really a lot of excitement in I at the moment and we need people like yourselves to be involved with research within radiology because at the moment, we are in a workforce crisis and we are struggling to fill all the consultant jobs in the country. So really you'll be able to pick and choose where you want to work and this is not because radiology is not a very competitive and very popular specialty. It's simply because imaging is so central to, you know, medical care now. And we realize this and we have just not enough people, also, radiographers, nurses to actually deliver the imaging, diagnostic work and also the interventional work that we would like. So now is the time for you to, you know, go into radiology as a career. So what does academic training look like? Well, for many of you who may be in the junior stages of your training, you might be coming out of medical school in your foundation years and you may feel that you've not had much time to do research projects in medical school. Perhaps you might have done these students selected component projects or summer projects where you've been involved with some data collection and may written up a paper, some of you may have even done an MD phd program with an integrated phd. So you'll have had a lot more time to hone some research skills. But for most people coming out of, you know, foundation training, they haven't had much opportunity to do research and it's simply because you've been managing other priorities and there is no time. So most of the academic Clinical Fellowships are an ST one entry um position. So you basically start when you apply to the AC F programs, you start as an ST one radiology trainee just like your peers. But for the first three years, you get 25% protected time just for research and you will be aligned with a professor or a senior academic in your department and they will mentor you through that process of working up projects, writing up these papers and potentially applying for A phd, which is the goal of an A TF to try and generate some evidence, generate your own academic CV. And then apply for a competitive externally funded fellowship. Obviously, with foundation training and with these SFP programs, there is an opportunity to do something different with a research job for four months or even to have some extra opportunity to do post graduate diplomas or certificates in research or in education. So there are, there are some different opportunities as well. There are a couple of AC F which start at ST three. So in Yorkshire, in the Leeds region, the AC F which has been running for almost five years. Now, it traditionally starts ST three. So it is open to trainees from outside of Yorkshire to apply to. But generally people applying are already a radiology reg and they're at the stage where they're perhaps coming to the end of ST two being ST three. And they might want to consider getting a bit more research experience and then they apply through again the oral AC F national recruitment system to specifically the ST three entry. And we'll go through in a bit more detail about the application form later on after you finish the AC F, you come out and you go back into training simply. So, um if you do the traditional route, you finish um after ST three as an ST four, you're back in full time clinical unless you've obviously applied for a phd and then you're out program and that doesn't count towards your five or six years of training. Generally, radiology is five years in total of training. Unless you do um interventional radiology or interventional neuroradiology. There's an additional six year after your phd. If that is the path you end up going down, you're still really enthusiastic and keen to be involved with research. There are higher fellowships and more advanced fellowships that you can potentially apply for which again funds that time for you to continue doing research and there will be senior academics in your hospitals who perhaps may be 50% or more academics. So they will do only 50% clinical and the rest of the time is for research because they'll be running trials, supervising ph D students and working on much larger scale projects within radiology. There are a few barriers to undertaking A CFS and also to going out a program for the phd because you do have quite a few exams. So in your first year, your your first part of your fellowship of the Royal College of Radiologist Exam, which is a physics and Anatomy exam. And then you have a bit of a break before you do your part two A exam, which is sort of written papers, the theory of all the radiology signs that you have to understand. And then the final part of the FCR, you generally do in your penultimate year of training or in your fourth year of training. And that can sometimes be a bit of a limitation to, you know, doing research because obviously, people prioritize the exam rightly, so to try and get those out of the way as well. So why do an AC F simply, you know, the most important thing is it gives you time to consider whether this is something that you enjoy and whether it's something you want to do long term. And even with 25% of your time, that might be taken as a block of time in your year or that some people may take it as a day, a week for a while and then add in the extra days if they're away for conferences or for workshops. But it just gives you a bit more protected time. You can work on a project to, you know, design the project with your supervisor, to doing the data collection, the analysis and then hopefully presenting that, writing up the abstract and hopefully the paper at the end of it from the time that you start most projects and certainly good quality projects. A lot of the upfront time and energy is invested in the design of a project to make sure it is robust. But from the time at which you start a project to then publishing a paper is much longer than people think there is no quick and easy job to, you know, get a paper sent out and published, you know, in time for, you know, applications if they're less than six months away, and most papers take over a year between the point at which you start the data collection to getting it in print. Because the whole review process of even the best journals can take months. You know, I have papers that I've sent to journals, which can be with them for almost six months, not to name and shame any journals. So plan ahead, it's really important to reach out to your local departments, any academics in the geographic regions that you work in to start planning ahead so that they can really invest time in developing a good project. You don't want to just be doing case report after case report because ultimately the research you do, you want it to move the needle and to generate evidence that will help improve the way we can deliver treatments or understand how we do certain treatments. And again, with applying for these academic programs like AC FS, you get a lot of support and this is both through resource. You get additional financial pots of money to use for travel to conferences, to present at conferences. You have extra support locally. For example, in Yorkshire region, you are funded to do a postgraduate diploma as part of the AC F which you usually have to just pay the university, which is not an insignificant amount. There are um usually twice a year academic retreats that you're invited to, where they design a whole program to discuss how to write a grant application, how to present um your research. And these are really useful skills to learn and clearly by being in an academic program, you're surrounded by other trainees, other academics who will mentor you and support you through that journey and your not when you're, you know, contributing to research, this is highly impactful, you know, I love interventional radiology. I love treating patients and seeing the direct improvement in, you know, someone's health that you can literally visualize as you're doing a procedure. But with research, you can impact so many more people. If you publish an impactful paper that changes practice, you will be, you know, helping people for years to come with with how you're able to improve the way we manage or diagnose patients. Um I really also enjoy a part of the academic journey, the mentorship process I've been through as a mentee and worked with some, you know, fantastic mentors. And now I'm at the stage where I'm also starting to supervise and mentor other trainees and that in itself is highly rewarding. I think that's why a lot of us came into medicine to make those important human connections and to try to inspire the people to maximize their opportunities. And, you know, you're able to sew the seas that perhaps, you know, you had the benefit of, of reaping as someone who's had some, you know, excellent support. And so that's one of the really rewarding aspects of being a clinical academic and it's not without challenges. It's um it is very, very much hard work because there will be times when um you'll have more things that you will just have to do than people who, you know, aren't perhaps interested in doing anything extra beyond beyond the day job. And that's completely fine. It has to be something you're passionate about and interested about, but that's not sustainable long term. And that's why you need the protected time to do research and with all the competing interests like your exams, time is always a finite thing that you're constantly fighting for. And this only just makes you prioritize things more and plan better and plan more strategically. So you can deliver on your timelines that you set out for yourself. Sometimes people worry that they are taking a financial hit by doing research. You know, is there any money in academia? Well, again, I would say if money was the driver for you to be doing research, that's probably meaning that this is not the right area for you to go into because clearly you can earn a lot more money doing other things, you know, from radiology, but not necessarily academic radiology. But the opportunities that it gives you and the life experience that it gives you is really unparalleled. I would say, because, you know, when you're able to travel to conferences and network with, you know, radiologists and medics and professionals from across the world, you're seeing new places, seeing new cultures. These are some of the, you know, really unique things about doing academic radiology and actually from a financial perspective with pay, it's pretty, you know, pretty good as a clinical academic, you're still paid an NHS salary. Unlike students coming out from science degrees who are getting a basic stipend covering a living cost, you are still getting a salary and there are opportunities still to locum and to do a bit of additional work to supplement that pay. And now for trainees coming back into training after having taken time out of research, like through a phd, there is also an academic stipend that you get, which I think is about 4000 lbs or so a year. So there are additional measures now to try and encourage people to do um you know, more research and you're only going to get more and more busy. And I think academic radiology in some ways prepares you for your consultant life where you'll have more responsibility, competing managerial commitments and it really is good preparation for being able to multitask a bit better and I'm the worst multitasker sometimes on, you know, any medical path, you may feel the route head isn't clear. And, you know, you're not sure where the path you're taking is headed. But again, as you get older, you realize it's about appreciating the journey as well. And, you know, the, the process of, you know, self improvement and with academic radiology, it's the same. You don't know, maybe that the next submission of a paper, whether it's gonna be accepted or the ne abstract you submit is gonna be accepted. But that's OK. You, you become adaptable and it's as onwards and upwards to the next journal or to the next conference um or to the next grant that you want to submit. And that's OK because life is never a straight road. Um I really love this quote from Theodore Roosevelt about the man in the arena. You can read it in your own time. But basically this highlights that um you know, the only way to know is to, to do it and the person who is in the arena doing it and learning from, from the outcome of trying something like research or anything in life um is the one that basically you should be given the most re respect because they're the one to give it a go and do their best looking at the application. Now, all this is available on the NR hr website, so I don't want to go into the nitty gritty of the wording or exactly what gets you points. You can go on the N hr website and the academic clinical fellowships and it gives you a very clear breakdown of each of the domains. But as I broadly overview these areas for eligibility or whether you're suitable for an AC F simply if you have a medical degree, you know, you will be able to apply for this, anything additional to this. If you have additional inte degrees or high degrees, um you know, it's not non essential, you get, get you a couple more marks potentially, but most people will have the the standard medical degree and you're, you know, you're good to go. And then in terms of academic achievements, clearly, the more you demonstrate that you've considered research and you've been involved with projects or won prizes or submitted papers that have been accepted, the more points you will get and you can see the wording of um the bottom right box with whether you've been involved with publishing abstracts, whether you've published as a um coauthor or as the first author of a um publication. These are the things that get you the the top marks educational personal aspects. Now, can you demonstrate in your application that you're committed to an academic career? And can you, you know show that you've tried to seek out research placement or research projects? Have you presented your work anywhere? And this is where you could also paint a much more personal story of, you know, why you became interested in research. It's never too late at all. And even if you're already finished out of medical school, you know, this is the time to go and speak to people who perhaps are um doing phd S to see what their experiences are. Speak to, you know, academics, not just in radiology, but in other specialties, you know, in radiology, we have much fewer academics and some of the other more research oriented specialties like, you know, surgery, oncology and cardiology. And if you're working in those placements, that's a great opportunity to tap into the brains of some of these people a bit further down the road than you. Um And yeah, one of the criteria is whether you demonstrate academic potential and there is a scoring category based on that and communication skills is also a separate domain. And this is really important because good communication within teams within research groups, it's important to be a good communicator as a leader. If you work on committees and demonstrating those extracurricular endeavors is really important. And clearly, if you have any presentations, whether it's regionally or national or international conferences needs to go into application and again, plan ahead and speak to people in advance if you need to still tick off some of these boxes, what research could you get involved? Now, it depends, you know, how much time you're able to commit to this. Many people try to do quite quick projects which I always think are a bit dangerous because, you know, you can still invest a lot of time in collecting data for an audit that really doesn't go anywhere, but a good place to start would be speaking to your departments and seeing if there are any retrospective, you know, audits or research projects that you can contribute to. I would always um any project that you're given. Um If you're not sure it's ok to say that you want to have some time to think about that and use that time to read around the subject. And if you have used things like PUBMED before, it's good just to type in those research questions into PUBMED to see what's available already for that research question because ultimately, if you're doing something that's already been done 10 times, you're not going to reinvent the wheel and that tape is not gonna, you know, unlikely to be published. It's much harder to get involved with prospective research just because these things take much more time, basic science research again, out with academic foundational A cs or phd S, you need time to learn those skills and be in the lab. But there are opportunities to spend a year in a lab somewhere in the UK or abroad to actually get those skills and that knowledge base and you will get a lot of additional knowledge and expertise. If you do undertake those experiences with A I with um areas of image based quantitative imaging analysis like radio mix, which is basically breaking down the the image vox soes and radio genomics, which is now using imaging to understand the genetics of a tumor. For example, these are all um more technical aspects of radiology research that you can get involved with. I thought now is a great time to mention the Unite collaborative because this is an initiative that I've been really fortunate to be part of where we're hoping to give more juni doctors and medical students around the country, more opportunities to get involved with high impact research and audit. Because now we have a network across the UK to run studies nationally. And basically this is a collaborative set up by trainees for trainees and medical students, but also supported by a lot of clinical academics within radiology to do more impactful research and also in the process, train the next generation of researchers, we run an annual research day which is great for learning about some of the ways to do statistics, to design clinical trials. And there's a slide later on that I'll be able to show you. But this has been really successful. We have finished already a couple of projects. One, looking at gallbladder drainage outcomes, one looking at acute aortic syndrome. And the first project we did, we had over 36 hospitals, join this centre audit and all the collaborators and the people who collected data. Each of these hospitals are coauthors on the final publications and we have already had two publications in the best IR journal for that project. And CASP. But the second project which is looking at acute aortic syndrome and aortic dissection is also in the process of having the first manuscript submitted. And this has been also a successful project for generating more funding to do some more advanced machine learning analysis as well. And we hope these projects will only be rolled out in increased frequency with the more people involved and interested in these projects. So we've been running for two years now and we've, you know, in the process or completed four projects with multiple more projects on the horizon. We run a, a journal club during the COVID period to try and highlight some of the exciting areas of radiology research and also break down some of the nitty gritty of how to, you know, interpret a research paper. And we've had some fantastic discussions with some experts who have been authors on these papers. The research day this year is at the Royal College of Radiologists in London on the 24th of November. It's an annual event, um it's always oversubscribed. So, you know, do do a come and you know, buy a ticket or you know, join yourself to the waiting list if you are all interested. And this will run every year around the same time. It's been fantastic with generating collaborations within the country, with other research groups, with other research collaboratives. And we've had financial support from organizations like the N I hr as well, which again is recognition of the impactful work that is being done through Unite. And um this is the group of people that run the day to day with Unite. They're all trainees, a couple of people about to become consultants or been junior consultants for the last year. And if you are all involved with Unite, want to be more involved with Unite, please get in touch. We're a really friendly bunch and just really keen to, you know, improve the way that research is done in the UK in our specialty. And obviously, none of this would be possible without all the collaborators across the country. So if you're at the stage where you're thinking, OK, I want to do an AC F or even maybe you are an AC F, what's the next step? Now during the AC F, you'll be having that time to work on your projects. But towards the end, what you really want to do is look at realistic options to get funding for A phd. And these are some of the organizations you should look at that provide either full funding for three years or perhaps provide part funding through other fellowships that they offer, which can supplement some of your income to then allow you to do research and additional research on top of your clinical training. Find A phd is a website which is fantastic for seeing other phd options which you may not usually hear of if you're not based in the center with the academic radiology department. And I would not just look for specific radiology phd. S because actually learning research skills is the most important thing in the phd. Now, clearly the topic has to be an area of interest for you and that can be oncology. It may be a supervisor who is not a radiologist, who is an oncologist. The phd that I completed, I had one radiologist as my supervisor and six other phd supervisors who were oncologists. Radiation is clinical trial statisticians. But you learn so much from working with different types of academics. So that isn't the most important thing. But the era of research, you have to have an interest to discover more about because at the end of three years, if you spent learning about prostate cancer or a certain type of cancer, you will to some degree be an expert in your field that you've been reading about and writing your phd papers about. So, um, it's important to pick a right project for you and pick a right group of supervisors for you for you as well. And finally coming towards the end of the presentation. Now, um, you know, there will be times when you're not sure about what you want to do, but rather than spend too much time thinking which door you want to open and then walk in and out. The most important thing is open one and go for it. Because what you will learn about that experience that you've, you know, tried and, er, whether you've under undertaken a project that maybe hasn't gone as according to plan or you might suddenly realize after, um, you know, period of doing research that's not for you, but that's also brilliant. You know, knowing that and knowing that you want to invest your time in future elsewhere, I think is really important and I would just say, go for it, whatever opportunities there are that you find for yourself, you should just maximize those um and look not just within your own center or your own network, you know, with research, a lot of the time you have to go where the research activity is happening and this is a, a biased process because, you know, research funding is inevitably centered around large academic units, you know, places historically Oxford, Cambridge and London have a lot more funding than everywhere else in the country. Now, that's not to say you can't do excellent research and you can't do phd S in AC F out with those places. But you have to again, speak to the people around, you go to the departments that you're working in and find out who is doing this research and speak to them and even looking abroad. You know, there are fantastic opportunities, you know, in really high flying centers in the US that are always looking for people, students who are really asked about research, do these one or two year research type fellowships, lots of European medical students will go to the States to do a year or two of research. And some even end up staying and doing the US similarly and staying, staying in the US because the research infrastructure is just far more robustly developed in a lot of those institutions. So, you know, the world is your oyster and you should again look abroad and look a field for any opportunities that might catch your eye. I think it's important that as you embark on this journey, any mentors you meet or people that you get along with or collaborators or coauthors you've worked with. It's really important to foster those relationships. You never know when you may need a letter of reference or someone to actually ask if you may be able to do a phd with them. And it's important to strengthen those bonds and connections as you go about your career. And I think that's just a courteous way of, you know, approaching these things. There are gonna be lots of challenges along the way. But within a medical career, you know, there will be challenges face professionally in the clinical situations you're you're facing. And it's important just to remember why you're doing these things, you know what's your driving factor and that's why it's important that you have a passion for whatever you're doing and that you, you know, you know why you're investing that time in, in research or in any clinical endeavors. And there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. And again, you know, not, I'm sure many of you have seen this slide. A lot of the time people may see or you may look up to supervisors or, you know, clinical academics who have published papers or been awarded grants and you see the success component. But what you don't see is the failed grant applications, the rejected papers and the time that they've invested to get to that point, and again, this is actually the most important thing of the aca academic journey is to experience some of those hardships and those failures because those are the experiences that really help you grow as a person, as a clinician and as an academic and don't be afraid about setbacks because um you will only be stronger for it. And you know, try again, that's the only way to, to move the needle and to push yourself to make, you know, make yourself braver and to go for things and this will then be transferable to all aspects of your clinical and um you know, professional careers. But remember prioritize yourself at the end of the day, what's important for you and what you're passionate about your family, your hobbies, um and the life that you live, you know, work is always gonna be there. There's going to always be plenty of work you can see from the increasing demand of imaging and the need for radiologist. There will be plenty of radiology work for you to do and plenty of research you can do. Ultimately, you need to look after your physical and mental health and keep that fine balance because it's a marathon, your medical career. Ok. So thank you for your attention. Um This is my email. If anyone who wants to reach out, I can see there are some questions now, Taha. So we can go straight in, straight into those questions. Yeah. No. Thank you so much, Jim. That was honestly a really, really useful talk and I certainly enjoyed it. I'm sure many others enjoyed it too. Um I've just put out a feedback form in the chat. Um So please do fill out the feedback. Um I know Jim probably find it really useful and it also just gives us an idea in terms of planning future events, what you guys would like to hear, what you guys don't like to hear. Um And you can also get an attendance certificate if you do fill out the feedback form. So just as an extra incentive now, I see there's a few questions in the chat. Um I think so, Jim, I can let you answer if that's all right. Yeah. Shall we just go through them in order? So, um yeah. Yeah, I think the first one I can see is do we have to apply AC F now and again, routine clinical radiology? Yes. So they are different applications. But you can apply for both and the timelines for the AC FS they used to start um earlier. But if you go on the N I HR AC F website or the, the region that you're considering doing the AC F in, they'll give you the exact dates for the AC F SI look, I looked at them today and they're all, they're all open actually now from the sixth of October. Uh I think for about six weeks or so I want to say and then um yeah, then it's shortlisting based on the criteria that I highlighted and there are a few other criteria I didn't go into and then you'll hear certainly, um you know, in the new Year, whether you've been in, got an interview or not. And then the parallel radiology training process, um you know, you have to obviously do that as well separately and obviously for both applications, you have to do the assessments and the interview will obviously be a separate process as well. Taha I don't know if you want to share anything about the clinical radiology, you know, application process, whether there's anything I missed about that component. No, no, not at all. Um So, yeah, the clinical application um is opening pretty much at the end of this month, I think um from what around 26 of October around that time. So it is does open slightly after the AC F application and equally closes a little bit later than the AF application. So yeah, it's very much separate processes. Thank you. Um You know, please feel free to ask any follow up questions as I go through these questions. If I have not fully answered, what you want to know, I rupa ask, can we change our specialty in the next round of applications if we are in an AC F post E GPA to radiology? Yes. So you can change specialty at any point. In fact, I would argue if you are on a CF now, you've demonstrated that you can reach the threshold of getting an academic training number. And um these are transferable skills to other clinical jobs. If you now feel that actually radiology is the CRE I'm interested in by all means you just apply not just for the AC F but also the standard radiology route because remember an AC F is not the only route into um you know, research, it just gives you a bit more time. But most academics within radiology have not gone through a traditional academic foundation job AC F route. And their opportunities still do research fellowships, one year, research fellowships and phd S as trainees who haven't done an AC F that is not the only route in. So yes, you can apply to another to the radiology. A TF if you're not in radiology, Tatiana asked how much freedom do you have to research in your own interests versus doing your projects with your, with a professor? Fantastic question. Now, the AC F traditionally in the UK for radiology have been aligned with specific departments with specific radiology, profits who have their own areas of interest. And so if you want to be a neurointerventionalist and you are working in the center where the professors of G I radiology and all the A CS S and G I radiology work, it will be difficult clearly to do er interventional your radiology research with this professor. But as an AC F your mentor, whether it's, you know, in this area, radiology or another area that you're not interested in their job is also to help develop you as an academic. They should help you find people who are working in the areas that you want to do more research in. But clearly you have to do a bit of the work yourself as well. And I would say any AC F, you're considering applying to look at their department, look at who's going to be your supervisor or the potential clinical academics in that department. And are they publishing on, you know, are they research active people and see if your area of interest, whether it's radiology or not, if there's research being done in the area. Now, that's one way to approach it. Another way to approach it is if you have no geographic commitments to any place, you can just try to find where are the centers that are delivering the best research in the area I'm most interested in and then reach out to those places directly. They may not have AC FS. But if you are working in that region as a trainee, clearly, you will be ahead of the pecking order for doing projects with that person as someone who's, you know, 100 miles down the road. Um And then next question, would you generally recommend leads for training? Oh, gosh, Taha and I clearly have very unbiased views on this. What other places have you heard are good for Ir and oh, clearly also disclaimer highly biased views on this from Ta Taha. Let you also chipping after I've said um I mean, there are fantastic places for both Ir and research I would say for research being um in a tertiary center always helps because you know, the department is bigger, they are more clinical academics, not just within radiology, but within the other specialties that are doing a lot of imaging research as well, like oncology, cardiology. And again, Google the place that you may be interested in. But again, interventional radiology, the bigger the center, generally, the more case volume, the higher end of the intervention is maybe done in leeds. There's a big Oncology center. So there's a big, more focus on a lot of procedures like tumor ablation. So we are one of the leaders in the UK in this service because we just treat more patients and leeds generally for training. It's an academy, there's a lot of investment financially with resources. Um and there are more trainees because it's such a big center, you know, I think in Tahar. Yeah, there are about 20 trainees, which is fantastic because you have, you know, friends that you work with, study with and I really love that social component of, of um radiology. But again, lots of great training schemes, more training schemes up and down the country as well with like the more traditional apprenticeship training. Taha, I'll let you chip in as well. Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, er, in my very unbiased view, Leeds so far has been really good as a training scheme. I'm only a month in, er, but I think the, er, they have an academy set up in Leeds alongside Plymouth and a few, er, a couple of other centers. And um because of the academy set up, you have, well, I have three days of teaching a week quite literally. So, um it's really helpful for getting you up to speed with what can be quite a difficult specialty to start off on. Um, but obviously, I mean, all centers have lots of positives and negatives and speaking to a few other trainees that I know up and down the country, like in London, for example, you get really interesting cases and high volume cases that you might not see elsewhere. But um I mean, at the same time, their training structure is slightly different and um it's not an Adey set up for example. So um uh it's uh one of the first things you start to like hear more and more about is as you um 10, these talks as well actually. Um But uh yeah, but uh in, in that first instance, I definitely recommend uh the next question is, do I need to apply for each region or like West Midlands? So traditionally, it again, correct me if I'm wrong, traditionally, you had to apply to a specific program for AC F, for example, the LES AC F, it's only open for leaves and you apply to that specific AC F. If you then want to apply to UCL AC F, it, it may be the same domains, but it used to be a separate application. There was an option to go AC F and then rank all the AC FS in the country. Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, Taha, if that's changed for in the last few rounds. No, I don't believe so. I think it is still very much region dependent but it's just that the selection criteria are quite standardized. Can you tell us about the AC F interview and what? Yes, of course, it's again, much more standardized. Now the A sf interview, those domains they also use for the interview itself. They score you, I think about out of 28 marks. Um and there's a clinical station so you have to meet the, the basic requirement um also to be a, you know, a radiologist. So it's not that you can avoid doing MS R A and the other components of the um so application process, you have to be appoint as a radiology trainee. So one of the stations or you know questions you will be asked in the AC F is actually how you might manage a patient having anaphylaxis in the CD department. So they know you're clinically safe and you're sound and that's basically you pass that station and then the rest of the interview around the research experience is about, you know, what unique things have you done? What research experience have you and why do you want to do the AC Fy? Um you know, you want to work with a specific supervisor, maybe what's your most proud achievement, er what leadership or um you know, research experiences, do you have very generic questions to get you to talk a bit around the experiences you have as an individual, but it is very standardized. And if you go on the NR hr A TF website, also websites like Ir Juniors and Radiology Cafe, they have lots of past questions. So some of these open questions you can practice perhaps before your interview as well. Um And then Marie asked, hi, I presume there is no requirement for Mr A or is it possible to find academic radiology as well as diagnostic clinical radiology in the same? Yeah. So um MS R A. Yes, you have to do that academic radiology. I mean, you, you should apply for both. Um You shouldn't, you should never apply for just the academic, the AC F routes because you want to give your best chance of getting into radiology. First of all, because once you've got your foot in the door, you can do as much research as you want. Time will be the limiting factor. But, um, you know, the train numbers are the ones that you should definitely go for to make sure you're working somewhere you want to work and then the posts for academic real are very few and far between. There are, you know, a handful of AC FS and many of the places that have AC F don't offer them every year, how AC FS are funded are usually through local funding or through the N I hr through the N I hr you have to compete with other specialties to get an AC F training number. So not every year, will there be an AC F in radiology in places that have AC FS? So you just have to look round and look on Oriel to see which places offer those AC F training numbers. Er Tong. Thank you. Thanks to and then um my says, thanks a lot for your presentation. Does going for a route.