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Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our annual preparation for Korean surgery event. The first event of our 2022 p four series You, our next generation of surgeons. This weekend we aim to inspire and inform you about day to day life of a surgical trainee in each of our 13 surgical subspecialties. We will shed light on applying for co surgical training, where to focus on England, Scotland and Wales today and Ireland. Tomorrow you will hear from over 25 speakers, with talks being recorded and available after the event As catch up content, please interact as much as possible in the chat box to clean as much information as you may need. The portfolio clinics will run for 15 minutes in parallel and you will get a chance to meet your mentors. Then we're extremely pleased to host this event via the medal platform and deliver it life two delegates across the globe. Through a partnership with Medals Fair Medical Education Program, we are able to increase accessibility to low resource settings to ensure that we provide equal access to surgical education and mentorship as very special. Thanks to our sponsors for this event, including the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Pastor MRCS Anatomy Spots in a verse. Medical Edinburgh Surgery Online and Medals Fair Medical Education. Feel free to check them out in the sponsorship tab of your page. Last but not least, a very huge thank you to all our members of our asset council who have volunteered their time this weekend to deliver talks and provide mentorship through our portfolio clinics were extremely grateful. Please, may I introduce you to Lara Manly, our representative for the Eastern Dina Re of the UK as well as our co surgical trainee Representative. Thank you, Laura. Hi. Thanks, Ryan. I'm just going to share my slides with you all so again, I don't want to echo what Ryan said. Good morning, everyone. And thank you so much for joining us at our assets, preparing for a career in surgery Course. My name is Laura. Manny. I'm a course surgical trainee in the east of England. And so I mentioned I'm also assets course surgical training representative. So what I'm hoping to do with the next 20 minutes is just give you a bit of insight into what course surgical training actually entails and how you can apply. So just to touch on exactly what caused surgical training is and what this involves for those view, perhaps a little bit further away from the application process. Formal CST Post generally lasts around two years, with the exception of Max fax posts, and the majority are sort of formal posts that are appointed through a national selection process. Off the Post, you'll find you have themed options, but unfortunately H E has paused recruitment for all I S T posts in England. Although they still be, they will still be available in Wales and Scotland. As I mentioned, Northern Ireland runs a separate recruitment process, and there'll be more talks on this tomorrow. So throughout, cause surgical training, you essentially record your progress using ELO book to document the procedures that you've done and I SCP For those of you that have trained in the UK and done foundation training here, this is essentially the surgical equivalent of the Horace Online platform, except you have to pay an annual fee to use it within call surgical training all of the days to you and put into these systems contribute to your annual appraisal or a R C. P, which will do at the end of both CT one and C t two. In addition to all your core surgical training competencies. In order to successfully get through court surgical training, you also need to complete the MRCS examination. And prior to completing your final CST post, however, I just wanted to highlight at this point there have been some recent updates to this, um so J. C S T has now recommended that you have both parts of the MRCS examination both part A and part B prior to receiving an S T three offer in order for you to go into that s t three post. No, I just want to say that core training is a really busy two years with all of these commitments. Um, and it can be quite expensive with SCP fees, exams and courses. So it's worth being really familiar with the requirements in advance and trying to plan your time and finances a little bit just in anticipation of that. So, as I'm sure, many of you will be aware the number of applications to call. Surgical training has been increasing year on year. It does still remain highly competitive. This year, a number of changes were made to the court surgical training recruitment process. Um, the biggest of these was the introduction of the MSRA exam to be used for short listing candidates and the second with the announced changes to the Portfolio Skowron criteria. For this year, I'll touch on these in a little bit more detail as we move along as well. You can find more details of the rationale behind these changes on the HD websites. I would highly recommend you go to the new section of the recruitment page for H G, and you can find the details of those announcements there. So for those of you who are thinking about applying this year, this is just a timeline I've put together again using information released on the H, the website. So applications this year will open from the third of November and we'll close on the first of December. There'll be a two week period in January in which to sit the MSRA exam, although the exact dates of this are yet to be confirmed and the interview window runs from January to March. For those of you a bit further away, it's worth noting that this is more or less similar year on year, so it can give you a rough guide as to what to expect. All applications to call surgical training are made via Oriole, the Oriole system. If you're not familiar with when having a look online just to get a little bit familiar with that in anticipation of the applications opening and just wanted to point out here, the majority of communications that you will have throughout this application process come in the form of Oriole messaging. Now, while this is linked to your email account, I would highly recommend not relying solely on your emails and regularly checking your email account for updates as you go through this process and prior to the applications opening this year, H e r. Running two webinars to explain this process in more detail and include a bit more information about those near the end of this talk. And we'll also pop a link in the chat as well for you to attend those. I just wanted to talk a little bit about preference ing. This is something that often causes anxiety for trainees year on year. So the preference ING process happens in the period between submitting your application and an offer being made. And you'll essentially be asked to rank your individual job rotations on Oriole the eventual offers that you get we based both on your preferences and your overall score. You can categorize jobs into three separate areas. Those which are ranked are those which will be offered to you in a particular order should you achieve the score to be able to take them. Um, if you place a job in a no preference column, this will mean that these can be given to you if none of your ranked preferences are available. But it's worth noting that these are all given equal waiting. So if there are jobs within that category, you think you would prefer over another. Please do include them in your ranked criteria. Those that are not wanted are those that you wouldn't consider. So if you place jobs in this column, it means that even if you achieve a score to be able to do this job will not be offered to you. So it is worth thinking really carefully now on the system loads of jobs to be made available to you. And I would highly recommend creating an Excel spreadsheet first in order to make that process of separating into columns a little bit easier for you. So what do we know about the scoring criteria this year? As I mentioned, there have been a lot of changes. The introduction of the MSRA. We know we'll count to 10% of the overall score, but it's also likely to be used for short listing candidates as well. The portfolio will count for 30% and your interview will count for 60% making up the bulk of your overall score. It's worth noting that actually compared to previous years, the percentage of which the portfolio and interview counts your overall score, it isn't dissimilar, so to talk about each of those components in a little bit more detail. The MSRA is obviously new to the court surgical training selection process, and it involves a single computer based exam that can either be sat at a piercing view, assessment center or online, and that will take place during that two week period in January. Dates are yet to be confirmed. This will be free to take for all candidates, and a practice question bank will be made available to all of those sitting the exam as well. So the questions of this exam are setting the context of the foundation program curriculum and aim to be at the level of a foundation year, too. Doctor, it doesn't require any specific knowledge of any UK systems, and a lot of a lot of specialties are already using this in the short listing process. So neurosurgery, for example, an ophthalmology. The paper itself is split in two. The first part of the paper is the Professional Dilemmas paper, and the second is the clinical problem solving paper. The Professional Dilemmas paper is essentially a little bit similar to the situational judgment test that you may have sat, and half of the questions are ranking questions and half a multiple choice. These are based on the G M C's generic professional capabilities framework, and you can find more information on that on the G M C website and I would highly recommend having a read through the clinical problem solving paper. So this looks at the application of knowledge and clinical problem solving skills. Half of the questions are extended, matching questions and half a single best answer. These are based on the foundation program curriculum, as I mentioned and cover 12 general medicine topics. What I did want to highlight is, if you are eligible for extra time, reasonable adjustments do apply to this exam. So if that does apply to you, please let HG know in advance. And again, you can find more details about this on their websites. So the changes to the portfolio this year. What we do know is that it will consist of four domains. Commitment to surgery quality, improvement in clinical audit, presentations and publications, and teaching experience and training and teaching. The waiting of each of these is a currently unknown, but I would suggest using the previous self assessment score in criteria as a guide, predominantly for collecting your evidence to support These notable changes are the removal of part A membership so that no longer scores your appoint for having sat the MRCS part A courses, prices that you may have received and degrees, and this also includes integrated degrees. They are no longer given a point in the new specification. So again, what I wanted to highlight here is that with all of these changes, I know some people are feeling a little bit disheartened. We recognize that you work so hard on developing your portfolios, and it takes an awful lot of preparation. But I just wanted to say there are a lot of criteria that will remain in order to give you those points of this round. And don't forget, many of this will come into play later on when you do your S t three applications. So it's certainly not wasted work. And then finally, the interviews after that long listing process, if you're successful, you will be invited to attend an interview. The slots That interview can be booked on Oriole, and these are given on a first come first serve basis. So again, it's really worth keeping up to date with your Oriole messages. We know that this year all interviews will be conducted online and typically these last 20 minutes. Excuse me. These are divided into a clinical station which often includes two scenarios and the management station, which will include a scenario and also a three minute pre prepared presentation on leadership and management with some time for questions. What I would highly recommend for the interview we know it counts for 60%. It by far makes up the bulk of your overall score is when you are preparing for this interview. Treat it like an exam. I've put some books on here that we're really helpful resources for me and one because it gives you an idea of the scenarios that might come up. But more importantly, it gives you an idea on how you construct your answers in that quite stressful scenario. So I'd highly recommend having a look at those. If you can, you can often get them from your medical library. The other thing I would suggest is find a practice partner. It's really helpful to go over these with other people, particularly if someone else is sitting the exam. You both have. You know, you both have a vested interest, so if you can find someone to practice with, that would be ideal. What I found particularly helpful was asking seeing your colleagues in my department to do a practice run or two near the time I can tell you from experience the more brutally honest, the better. So if you've got someone that you get on well within your department, you think would be quite helpful, please, to approach them. It's a really useful trial run of doing this of doing this interview. My final recommendation would be I have a quick 80 assessments feel you'll know in one way, shape or form. This will come up in the interview, and so it's just really helpful to be able to get those marks quickly to have a nice, preformed idea of what you want to say in those situations. So what can you do? Well, the first thing I would recommend is to go through the person's specification to make sure that you're eligible to apply. The second thing is to ensure that you're gathering evidence. Now. This can be quite time consuming, particularly if you're requesting letters or certificates from previous trust or universities. And the process of actually uploading and organizing these on your computer can also be quite time consuming. So if you can recommend doing this as you go along, but certainly if you're thinking of applying this year, um, that is something I would definitely focus on for the next couple of months. And thirdly, again. If you're applying this year, start contacting your referees. So within the process, you will need to provide details of three referees who have supervised you during your clinical training within the last two years. That's in any capacity, can be an educational supervisor. It can be someone you worked with on a project. But what I would suggest is start having to think now about who you might like those referees to be, and it is worth just popping them occur to the email, just asking if they're happy to do that. And then often the actual, uh, invite to reference is sent through Oriole. So what I wanted to draw your attention to, I believe the link has now been pasted in the chat. For those of you that are interested, I would highly suggest attending the HD Webinars that outlined some of the changes that have been made to the court surgical training, um, application and and recruitment system. This year, they're going to be detailed across two webinars to the first being on the 31st of October at 6 30. This goes through the rationale for those changes and the process of the M S. R. A second on the second of November starts a little bit later at 6 45 and this will go through in a little bit more detail, a self assessment process and guidance for the portfolio. So thank you very much for listening. I know that's a real whistlestop tour. In less than 20 minutes of how you can apply to court surgical training, I'm more than happy to answer any questions in the chat. Um, this can often be an anxiety inducing times. People that are applying, um, I can just see something popping up in the chat about. Will the webinars be recorded? I have been assured that they will. So please do keep an eye on the website. You will be able to access them even if you can't make that time. Another one coming up in the chat is. Do the referees have to supervise clinical training? If we have taken an F three in a non clinical post, would they be able to act as a referee? So my understanding is that essentially anyone who has supervised you in any clinical position can essentially act as a referee for you. So if you've found that you've worked with a particular consultant a lot, perhaps during F three years, I would suggest they will probably be a sensible option. Um, as a referee again. If you've worked on perhaps extra curricular projects with someone, then they're also worth bringing in as a referee. It's a key of really just seeing who, Who have you worked with a lot. And who do you think you'll be happy and organized enough to be able to respond to the references in time? So the question that I've just seen coming through can you please clarify of passing the MRCS part? A. Will no longer be rewarded the points. So that is correct. Um, the changes that were announced earlier this month by H E um does remove some aspects, which does include the previous point or two that was allocated to either sitting or passing the MRCS part A that will no longer be included in the selection process this year. So the other one is the next one we've got is do audit slash Q. I projects that need to be strictly surgical to gain maximum points, or can they be in a general medical topic. Um, this is a really good question. So, uh, to focus on core training in particular, first of all, is to say that, actually, no. Um, in previous years, there have been no distinction. Obviously, we haven't seen the exact criteria for this year yet. I suspect that will be released in the webinars or typically when applications open, but certainly in the past, it's not been discriminated against as to whether it's surgical or non surgical, um, and again later, down the line for S T three applications, for example, some specialties have separate points in fact, separate point allocations for those who are not linked to surgery or not linked to their specific specialty. So if you have a Q I project or an audit that you're interested in, that perhaps isn't surgical, um courses something medical, perhaps something entirely different. Maybe it's about medical education. It does still count by and large, either at CT, either in CT applications or an S T three. So I hope that answers your question and again if you have any further questions about any of these answers that I've given, please do for free to pop it in. The chat will pop me an email. So the next one is and the C S T interview What kind of things they're expecting in leadership and management presentation. Okay, so, um, this question tends to vary slightly year on year, but essentially, it might ask you for examples of where you have demonstrated perhaps leadership skills or negotiated conflict, for example, again, the books I suggested on my page. I will pop some links in here if that's helpful for people to view those books in more detail. But they essentially cover any aspect of leadership and management, and my recommendation for that presentation is it's It's quite short three minutes goes very, very quickly in an interview setting and pre prepare this as much as you can, um, think about your presentation skills within that, although it's online and it does seem a little bit difficult. Um, making sure all those usual sort of skills were presenting are drawn in that my key recommendation would be it's very easy to make those quite generic and what you really want to bring in your personal experiences so that you can show your interviewer that you really do have the skills of leadership and management, not just perhaps a certificate that says you've had a role but what you've actually done in that role or what you've achieved. Um, what I found particularly useful when I prepared mine was to send it to a couple of colleagues and people that have recently been through the CST process to get their advice. That was incredibly helpful. I went through lots and lots of drafts, but it's definitely worthwhile doing so. Another one. We have an inter kelated in clinical education. Does that fall into the training and teaching section? Um, so again, the exact criteria does change year on year. I believe last year's specification was that five or more days in a sort of training role, um, within I know your clerk education degrees. Often you are doing a lot of teaching within that, um so I suspect it probably does. But again, I can't entirely speak for the specification. This year. I don't know what evidence they will accept. I don't know how the criteria, in terms of the specifics, the training and teaching will change, but certainly in the past, there will. There would be ways that you would be able to apply that to, to get points. I hope that answers your question. I know it's very difficult to go into specifics of the portfolio when we haven't actually seen the scoring criteria for this year yet. But certainly using previous score ing systems as a guide, I would say at this stage would probably be sensible, particularly if you're thinking about collating your evidence and what evidence would be accepted. So the next question is, does the referee have to be a consultant again? Really? Good question. So, um, I know the majority of people will use consultant referees. I believe there is scope for academic referees. So perhaps professors and things, but certainly I think it would have to be someone who has post CCT and in in that position of responsibility in order to be able to be your referee. Um, guidance on that may change, but I know certainly from previous experience and what others have done in the past, I would certainly recommend someone, um, that is a consultant or post CCT. So does the reference referee have to be a surgeon again? Another really good question. So Um no. Is the answer to that? I had me personally. I used referees who I did medical jobs with as an F one and F two. Um, that's absolutely fine again. It can be a variation of surgical, non surgical academic. There certainly are options. So if you can think of someone who perhaps you've had really good contact within a nonsurgical job, by all means contact them as a referee. And we've got a question about the prizes and courses part that's no longer scored. Yep, so I'll just repeat that for you. So, essentially, the key areas that have been taken out the scoring specification this year that have already been announced are the MRCS part a scores that were available for any previous prizes attained either pre either during your medical degree or postgraduate. Um uh, and inter collated degrees. Now also no longer count for points. I hope that answers your question. Deborah again do pop in the chat. If there's anything else, I'm happy to make these slides available through medal. I think they will be able double. Check that for you. And please, can I clarify what commitment to surgery entails? Yep, Again another really excellent question. And unfortunately, the answer to that has changed year on year. So previously last year Commitment surgery included things like courses, the MRCS, part eye examination, um, number of operative procedures that went up to 30 and brackets that could be scored. Whether you've done a surgical elective or not. Um, I have to say we we don't yet know exactly what this year's criteria for commitment to surgery will entail. Um, so again, I highly recommend attending the HD Webinar on the portfolio session on the Second of November, um, to find out more information on that. But generally it's, as I say, aspects along that vein that shows that you've had an interest in surgery in one way, shape or form. But again, exactly what that means has changed every year. So will conferences still count points points wise? Does this conference count and knowledge of any upcoming virtual conferences. So in the past, as opposed to conferences, it has been courses that has been included in the criteria. I know that may seem like a fine line distinction, but courses of things you know, you get a certificate of having perhaps learned a new skill, etcetera, etcetera. There have previously been list, of course, is that they have accepted, and this has included various asset courses. However, this aspect is now being taken out of the criteria completely. So whilst I can't specifically comment on conferences as a separate element, I highly suspect it comes under the courses criteria and so probably will not count for points for this year's application. So can I apply for CST if I've had my full GM see registration, Um, 21st the 8 2021 then working in the UK four months? So what? I would highly suggest here and and it covers it in quite a bit of detail. Is looking at the C S T person specification. This has been updated for this year, So I was just looking at If you've got any further questions having read that, please pop me an email and then I'd be more than happy to give you some more advice. So I don't know how we're doing for time. I'm more than happy to keep going through these questions. I'm just gonna screen to see if there's any who, uh, sort of specific to the whole group. Do you need to have evidence for all portfolio achievements by application or by interview again? Another really good question. So in the past, there has been a time period that has been allocated to uploading your evidence for self score ing. So this is prior to interview. So, ideally, you need your evidence in place at the time that you need to buy the deadline of uploading your evidence. I don't know specifically this year's dates for uploading evidence. Um, but often they will send you lots and lots of e mails and information on how to do this. I remember it being a relatively straightforward process the year I applied. I don't think that's changed dramatically for this year. An elective in trauma classified as a surge collective again difficult for me to answer that question. What? What is accepted year on year tends to change. Um, but it's worth thinking about your experiences and how perhaps you can, you know, how is that relevant to surgery? And that may well come into play. But I can't comment specifically on whether it will count. Sorry for that team in terms of the, uh, MSRA exam. Know all candidates who want to sit the MSRA exam can sit it. Um, so it's not a case of being short listed for the exam. It'll be the exam that is used to shortlist. Because surgical training, where I can see Ryan has popped back up on my screen. I highly suspect that means I'm long out of time. Um, but, please, if you've got any further questions, do email me, I'm more than happy to get back to you, and I'll keep an eye on the chat for the next 20 minutes or so and and try and respond through that. All right, Thank you so much for your time. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. You've got a really great set of speakers lined up, so enjoy. Thank you. Thank you very much, Laura. And thank you for shedding light on, um, course surgical training. And just to emphasize a lot of it is uncertain at the moment. And we would strongly advise attending the 80 webinars, Um uh, where you can get an opportunity to submit some questions as well directly to the team there, Um, and also just, uh, look out for any updates from the websites from 80 in the coming weeks.