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How to maximise your score in your IMT portfolio?

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Summary

In this on-demand teaching session, the renowned dermatology fellow, Dr. Arvin Seran shares his invaluable insights on building your portfolio for Internal Medicine Training (IMT) to gain maximum points. Despite being a dermatology advocate, his familiarity with IMT applications is solid given his high-ranking history in the domain. Dr. Seran walked through the 2025 portfolio matrix for those seeking insights into point scoring systems for IMT applications. The session is packed full of vital, relevant information including details regarding postgraduate degrees, teachings, publications, and presentations. Dr. Seran breaks down each section, explaining how to maximize scores effectively and efficiently. He is also on hand to answer personalized questions and clarify doubts regarding IMT applications. Don't miss out on this valuable opportunity to get guidance from someone who's navigated the IMT application process successfully!

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Description

Are you looking to boost your application for Internal Medicine Training (IMT)? Join us for an efficient and concise session on how to optimize your portfolio score and secure your spot in this competitive program.

During this session, Dr. Arvindh Sekaran, a locum registrar who has completed 2 years of IMT in Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, will share the IMT program requirements and provide insights on how you can effectively prepare their portfolios during your time as a foundation doctor, fellow or IMG. He will go through the following:

  • Key components of the IMT application process
  • Scoring breakdown of the portfolio and the most heavily weighted areas
  • Tips on how to maximize each domain
  • Strategies for enhancing your portfolio with publications, presentations, and quality improvement projects

This session will offer practical advice, clear action steps, and insights from someone who has successfully navigated the IMT application process. Whether you're just starting out or finalising your portfolio, this event is designed to give you the tools and knowledge to maximize your chances for success.

Don't miss out on this invaluable opportunity to elevate your IMT application!

Learning objectives

  1. Understand the process of building your portfolio for I MT to maximize your scores.
  2. Familiarize with the 2025 portfolio matrix for IMT application.
  3. Learn about the importance of postgraduate degrees, presentations, publications, and teaching experience in improving portfolio score.
  4. Understand how to utilize current work or educational experience, such as audits or ongoing teaching programs, to improve IMT scores.
  5. Gain clarity on how to secure points effectively through oral presentations at national or international medical meetings, original research publication, and organizing teaching programs.
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Computer generated transcript

Warning!
The following transcript was generated automatically from the content and has not been checked or corrected manually.

Well, welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining from wherever you are. It's, it's a great um chance for us to, to meet. And uh today we have doctor Arvin Seran who has been an IMT, he's done IMT one and I MT two and is now a fellow. He's a Dermatology fellow. Uh So, despite this being a cardio junior session, uh I MT applies to him as well. Um He's done very well. He was able to rank very highly for his I MT and was able to get his top uh ranked place for I MT. So thank you so much, Doctor Seran for coming on here and he's going to talk to you today about uh how to build your portfolio for I MT to maximize your scores. So, without further ado, thank you, Pauline. Um So, yeah, thank you for that introduction. Uh So I did it in Cambridge. Uh That's the context and I did a bit of local med edging and then I secured a Dermatology fellow job. So that's where I'm at now. But I thought I could part on my knowledge in how to prepare your portfolio for I MT which is becoming more and more competitive every year. And these are the things we'll go through. Um And I want to put out the caveat that this is correct as of now. Um Unless they decide to change the portfolio scoring just like they did for CST, um which I have, they don't. So the first thing we'll go through the 2025 portfolio matrix. So that's for anyone applying this time around. These are the kind of points you need to be scoring and then we'll go through the timeline and then feel free to ask any questions because in on this kind of topic, personalized questions and answers are probably most useful for you guys, we've got a small audience so you each can ask whatever questions you want to on the chat or the Q and A section. So we'll go through one by one in the po portfolio matrix. So the first one is postgraduate degrees and I would have to say this is the one I would not worry about the most. Um Not many people have a preceding masters or a phd. So you won't be competing against these candidates. Um You have to bear in mind if you, if there's anyone in the audience who have, who's gone down a different path and has had a pediatric exam, uh Mr CPC H or has done M RCP. These don't actually count as postgraduate degrees for I MT. Um I'm so sorry if you could also add the pole in. Oh, yeah, the pole or actually I'm happy to do that. Yeah. Do that. Um So what does count are things like the diploma of tropical medicine and hygiene? So you can do that. You can type in um postgraduate diplomas and post graduate certificates and there's a vast number of uh postgraduate diplomas that you can do. But bear in mind these do take a year at least to do. Um And you only secure a point if you do, I think your time is better invested in the other sections. So don't worry about getting a master's or a phd. So the next section uh presentations um right at the top uh is an oral presentation at a national or international meeting. And I want to highlight that this is for a first or second author. So often you find when you're an F one F two or still uh as a more junior resident doctor. Um You'll have uh a senior doctor who is the lead of the project, but they may put you down as second author. Even if they go on to present at the conference, you can still claim points since you were the second author of a oral presentation. So you need to make that distinction. You yourself don't need to give that oral presentation. You just need to be the second author of an oral presentation that's been given. Um And what is classified as a national or international medical meeting. Um Any of these university conferences since they are advertised on social media, et cetera. And with an online audience, you could argue any of these university conferences that medical schools run could be an international medical meeting given you are inviting anyone who's international and also the UK nations are treated as separate nations. Uh So if you are inviting someone just from England, that's still uh a national meeting. And if you invite someone from England and Scotland, then you've got an international meeting. I think that is the easiest sort of way via university uh conferences. Um You can also consider uh oral presentations at the Royal Society of Medicine. You can apply directly to give one. And some of these uh some of these specialties have specific national societies. So I'll pick dermatology. They have uh Derm Sock and they have Derm so days which are essentially national meetings and you can uh they often advertise for speakers. So you can apply and say, oh, I want to speak about this and there you go, you've got an oral presentation. You are the first author because you're the only one who's made it. And that'll be a national meeting and an oral presentation at that, I have to highlight that a poster presentation is not the same as an oral presentation. A poster presentation often is just you showing your poster at a conference. If someone walks by your poster, you may talk about it, but that's not a oral presentation and that's just a poster presentation, but that still gets you two points uh in if you were the first or second author at a regional or local meeting. Um As we go on, we'll discuss how you can really use, use your time for one project, but then it can lead to a presentation, publication and Q IP as well. Uh I can see there are some questions in the messages I can get to them at the end. So next topic um is publications. Now the top points are given for a first authorship in original research and it has to be PUBMED cited. So just one publication though says one or more, but if we're talking about the most efficient way of getting points, just do one. first author, joint first author, this one, you have to be a bit careful about some journals. Don't allow joint first authorship, some kind of hash it and say if you write it in the acknowledgements, part that these two authors have contributed equally, then that could be considered as a joint first author or corresponding authors. So sometimes someone else has written the paper, et cetera, but they might not want to be the corresponding author, the one who's submitting the paper into the journal's platform. If you find a team that's kind enough to put you as a corresponding author, then without you having, right, having written anything, then you've become the corresponding author of uh a pub made article. So, um, just, just think about that, see who, you know, in your research circles. Um, and you might strike lucky. Uh Unfortunately, luck is a big part of getting a publication. You know, a lot of my friends have just had, uh, just had their names added on, um, just by chance. So it, it's, it's part of the game that you have to play. Unfortunately. Um What counts as original research. So you can do a systematic review. Uh You can do a meta analysis, that's even more work. Um You can do a retrospective observational study. Um And you've often find that retrospective studies are just glorified audits. So if someone's asked you to do an audit and you're filling in this massive Excel spreadsheet of 50 columns, you should ask yourself, OK. Is this actually going to amount to a publication? Can I make it into a publication since I'm collecting so much data? Um Of quite often these audits can be argued as a retrospective observational study and then be published as original research. So if any of you already have such audits, talk to your supervisor and see if that's possible. The next easiest way of securing points is by writing at least two editorials, reviews case reports or letters and out of those probably case reports or letters are the easiest to do two of um and bear in mind this doesn't have to be in the specialty that you are applying for, for higher specialty training. Um In fact, if you're thinking of more than one specialty application, so some of my friends have applied for radiology and internal medicine, but you might know that radiology needs radiology specific publications. You could do a radiology specific publication and you still get all the points in this domain. So you just have to think smart about that if you're applying to multiple uh specialties. OK. So the next section teaching experience. So this is essentially a teaching program. I'm sorry, I'm just wondering if we could just uh start the pole and then see how people respond and then we can gauge it to, to the right level of everyone. That's OK. Oh yeah, that's good. Just a minute or so. Yeah, that's a good idea. Actually. Let me see the past poles whilst you fill in this current poll. Oh, wow, that's good. Uh Previous section, lots of people had four points for publications. OK. So where is your school for teaching experience? OK. So um it's good to see you. Uh most of you have got the five points anyway, but for those who don't um three months of a regular teaching program is what you need to have organized and what does constitute regular teaching, you could say every two weeks. So if you run six sessions over those three months. That would be a regularly taught period and formal feedback. That could be via a lot, a lot of these teaching programs are either done at university and then your local medical education society or your clinical school can give you a certificate saying here's a feedback given. Um This is for a teaching program that this person has made. Or if you're an F one F two, your foundation program uh administrator ca who's also in charge of all the educational things can also give you a certificate to say you have organized a teaching program. Um When you get evidence, just what I say is just copy and paste, what it says here in the box to make sure uh the evidence gets verified. Uh Don't deviate from the wording. Um uh Otherwise you, all your efforts are in vain and that, that goes for all the, all the, all the different domains as well. OK. So if, if you wanna deploy the pole, we'll see what this one's like. OK. So a lot of you have one point and getting that one point is actually probably the easiest one point uh compared to a post grad diploma earlier. Uh all you have to do is this online uh teaching the teacher course, you could do that via future learn or anyone who's um NHS who has an NHS email can do that course for free. Uh So really do it, you can, it's meant to be a five week course, but you can do it in 45 minutes and you'll get that one point secured. Um, uh, it's called, uh, train the Trainer or teach the teacher. A lot of, a lot of similar courses are being run. Sometimes your Deanery can fund it for you or they might offer a free version themselves. Hence, they won't fund any external ones. But like I said, um, I'll get you the name uh after I finish the talk. But uh uh they're all a very similar name train, the trainer, that's the one train, the trainer, future learner. You just do, uh it's in the chat on messages. Um You just log in by your NHS email and then you should get it for free. So that's one point secured. Don't, don't uh spend your time trying to get APG search or a PG diploma. Um And if any of you have a local, some, some universities run a more prolonged educational program. So, so I'm in Cambridge. They ran something called an integrated foundations of medical education. So that's three half days spread across six months with a written assignment at the end. Uh Those obviously are much more effort than an online train, the trainer course. Uh but you end up with an Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy Award or you can apply for that and that would only give you one point, but it's great to talk about when it comes to interview. OK. So should we have the P or this one? OK. So that's good. A lot of you have got four points. So what does two cycles of the quality improvement project actually mean uh The first one is you're just collecting data of the current situation and then you implement an intervention and then you repeat the same thing. So, so that's first cycle, followed by intervention, followed by second cycle. Um And that's all you need to do and you'll get four points for that. Uh For example, I did mine during GP. So it doesn't matter what specialty you do it in. Again, I did mine during my GP rotation. And GP is often the best uh rotation to do it in because you have more time and with the GP systems you work with, it's very easy to do audits and pull out data very quickly. Now, I did mine on citalopram dosing in the elderly. Uh It has to be less than 20 mg once a day. Uh I've pulled all of that data for anyone over the age of 65. Um That's my first cycle and I say, oh look, this is very bad. Lots of people are on more than 20 mg. My intervention, I called all those people who were on more than 20 mg and I told them don't take that much uh reduce it. Then I repeated the cycle. Um And there was an a direct improvement I was directly involved in that improvement and that's all that was required. Um And again, it doesn't have to be in the specialty that uh you are applying for a high specialty training. And this ones are very important, the way you evidence this is via the Q IP at form. That is the form that as soon as they see on your evidence file, they probably will just click it, look at it for two seconds and go away. Anything else? They'll probably spend longer and scrutinize. So what I suggest is get that qi A form from the IMT website, fill it in with exactly the wording here in the matrix. Uh get your supervisor to sign it and you'll be safe. Now I put this in. It's not for I MT thankfully, uh it's only for HST but for anyone who's in a period out of training, I would suggest get your M RCP done and dusted because when it comes to higher specialty training, you get uh a whopping eight points for it and that's for the full M RCP. And they consider paces to be more important than the written exam. Even though traditionally, you would do part one and part two written then paces in that order. Uh You can actually do pas before your part two written. OK. So this is the timeline uh for this year. Um So in October the 23rd, all the I MT vacancies will be published and make sure you uh pick, make sure you pick, pick it and do it on time. Uh You don't, there's nothing like first come, first serve at all. Um Just don't forget because then they close on the 21st of November. Um They long list you and then they shortlist you. Uh To be honest, I'm not too sure how you can fail to be long listed unless there are kind of, unless you're not a doctor or something. Um The shortlisting is uh based on the points, the self assessment scoring, there will be a point where you maybe needed to submit your evidence. Uh I remembered I had to do that. Maybe uh the timeline is different back in back during my timeline. I had to do it in January. But the interview, uh the interviews here are starting in January until February. So I think in the week before January is when you have to submit your evidence, then your rankings are released and we'll, you'll only have to preference your programs after um which is, which is kind of useful. You'll know your rankings before then. OK. So that's the kind of brief overview. And if I go through the questions in the chat because there's quite a few along the way. So thank you, Doctor Seran, I've put them in the Q and A section. So one of them from Radica. I'm sorry if I uh said your name wrong uh is do oral presentations include nonp published stuff such as a complex clinical case presentation not published and everyone can, can see the Q and A questions as well. Uh Yes. Uh So for example, if you apply to the Royal Society of Medicine and say I want to talk about this interesting case, you don't have to have published it anywhere. Um You can still present it. So a lot of the oral presentations that happen at conferences, those aren't actually formally published. S they've made an abstract and that conference has either allocated it to a poster or allocated it to a oral presentation. So those aren't actually uh published in, in a journal with API D. So you can do oral presentations without it being published. Yeah. The next question from Portia is can the publication that has been presented orally count for both or has to be different things in each category it can count for both. So um this is what I should have talked about. So the most efficient way of doing this would be doing AQ IP. Uh It would have to be a fairly substantial Q IP project, writing it up for publication or either or. So the order of publication presentation can be in either order if you do the Q IP first present it and then publish it, you can secure points for all of this for the same project. I'm not sure you men whether you mentioned about curious as well Oh, yes. Yeah. Uh So in the publication section, uh a lot of people when they go to publish, they find that there are um, absolutely insane fees or article publishing charges that unless you're a part of a research group or your hospital funds, maybe one publication a year, for example, in B MJ case reports, um people don't really have funding to get this through and get published. Um, there are predatory journals that I would stay away from because they can like actually steal your money. But there's one journal which is, which is pretty established and it's an American online journal called Curious if you uh if you edit your submission to their kind of requirements of how they style their paragraphs, their headings, their references, et cetera, you can actually be accepted and published for free and that's how I actually did it. Um So I highly recommend using that route. Now, I that's a recommendation if you don't want to have kind of a academic fellow kind of research orientated future because the hardcore researchers kind of look down on curious, it used to be a good journal and then I think it was flooded with a lot of suspected um like subpar uh work. But this is how you get your points, it gets you eight points into I MT and if that determines your life career and where you're going to be, I don't care, I'm gonna submit to curries. Yeah, I've added the curious link um, to the messages as well. Um The next question from, um, I'm sorry if I mispronounced her name is Teach the teacher course counts as well. Uh Yeah. So because it's anything that involves training in teaching methods. So if you're teaching a teacher that still counts or if you're learning how to be a teacher that still counts. Yeah. Uh, question from Akansha. The oral application asks to mention any courses that are relevant to I MT what sort of things can count for this? Yeah. So there can be online courses. Um Sometimes your local health education board, for example, health education, east of England. Um they often have these random courses that you can find that's run by other hospitals. There are internal medicine courses or you can do a Subspecialty or a higher specialty course. So if you did uh gastro course or like um a cardiology course, those would all count online or face to face, you could also do practical skills courses. So uh ultrasound. So that's really kind of that will really upskill you, especially for intensive care jobs. Um You can do kind of central line courses, intravenous, uh ultrasound guided cannula courses, all of those prep you for um I MTN would be relevant. I'm sure you just have to see what your local um health education kind of deanery offers. Uh For example, in, in eastern England, we have something called Bridge and they often have random online courses on it that you can just apply and watch. I wonder if med courses would also count. Uh, yeah, I think, uh, anything with a certificate that says you've done this course and it's relevant to an internal medicine specialty would count. So after this, if you just a quick plug in, if you, um, write in the, not the reference but sort of the, uh, what is it called? Uh, like the review, then you can get a certificate for, for this as well. Yeah, because this is a course it shows your interest in IMT how do you want to get in? So this would count um the next question from Akantha as well is do we have to submit the evidence with our oral application or only later? Thank you. You submit it later. But why it say is all, all your things that you're claiming points for have to be secured before um your application deadline. So be before that oral application window closes, you need to have done all your accomplishments. The exception to that is the publication where it has to be in press if it's not formally published, but it's in press, then you can still claim points for but everything else you need to have completed. So if I've done the first cycle of AQ IP during the application window and then I can only do the second cycle afterwards, I would only get points for the first cycle. And if you tried and submitted evidence to say, oh look, I did the second cycle later because often the, the evidence submission date is later like in January. So you might submit a full complete uh two cycle quit. Uh They will hold that against you and um say this is a probity issue. So I'd be very careful with that. Some people get away with it. But um uh my advice is don't try. The next question is from Imo. Uh The question is I have a regular teaching from PA S from January to March 2023. Over four sessions, organized delivery teachings. I hope that counts for regular teachings over three months, January, February March. So that's three months, four sessions spread across. Uh I if you have a uh certificate that says it uh says the matrix words and you kind of give those details. I don't see why you don't get the points for that and have, have some feedback uh put in, then you'll be fine. I think the next question is from Yasmin. Since you are currently doing a Dermatology junior clinical fellow. Is it better to apply for that before IMT or do I go into IMT directly if I get into IMT, uh I want to specialize in dermatology? OK. Yeah, I'm a senior clinical fellow. Um So in terms of doing a junior clinical fellow, um it does help your dermatology applications um because I know people who've done a junior clinical fellow. But I think to get into it, they often um either have an internal candidate who's done kind of foundations, like they might not have a DCI foundation rotation, but they would have had links to the department. And then they've had an internal candidate who can go straight into the clinical fellow job. Or as uh is often the case, the junior clinical fellow jobs will ask uh kind of at least two years experience of medicine and they might not say IMT, but then it's, it's like as if you needed two years of being a, a medical like a a level of the IMT before you even get that junior clinical fellow job. So I would just go into IMT directly uh and then look forward to try and getting senior clinical tele jobs uh because now neology is very competitive. You're gonna need uh some sort of fellow role to really show your interest at interview. Um is asking apologies, it has been asked previously, does intercalated MRE S count MS uh let's go back to this intercalated emre. Now you can see three points. It says Emre. Um so theoretically that should count uh what it, there's a line there that says it must not be claimed for upgrading a bachelor's degrees without further studies. So Oxford and Cambridge upgrade MA S to, I mean bas to MA s but that doesn't count. Um It's, it's more about the length of it, I think as long as your Mr S has lasted eight months or longer, it should count. I'm not sure about intercalation. Um I haven't seen that sort of example before. Um Yasmin has asked, so we don't need to submit our evidences with the application, this October or November. So it's going to be an oral application. Um You sh they should ask you self scoring of all these domains and often they, they would only ask evidence submission after. Um So when I, when I did it, I did not have to submit evidence at the time of my oral application. Um because I was like, I understand your worry. I was worried, oh, I have to get all these letters signed off by consultants who don't reply to emails. Um That that's ok because you've got a bit more time as long as you know, you will get the evidence. That's fine. What I'm saying is just secure all your evidence like paperwork at the time of your application because then you don't need to worry about this certain consultant never seeing your email. And then you'll run into an issue where you've self scored higher than you can evidence. And then that's a probity issue. The next question is from Zara. Um How do we determine for our oral presentations? Who is 1st and 2nd author? I presented the quip and was first author in the presentation. But in the quip, I wasn't the first author, right? That's an interesting question. So when you presented the clip, if you had all the authors on the slide, which I hope you did, because that's kind of a way of how you kind of show you're the first or second author. If you presented it and your name was first in that bunch, you can, as long as you get a certificate or evidence that says to that effect, you'll be fine. I, and when you say um in the quip, you weren't the first author. I assume you've written that up, maybe either informally for the trust or formally as a publication and you weren't the first author. Um But for the purposes of the presentation, as long as it's in a national meeting, what I would get is some sort of evidence from a supervisor who's probably the last author on that clip to say uh Zara was the um the first or the presenter of this clip at a national meeting. If you get that in writing according to uh the matrix, uh where the presentation here um according to this matrix, I don't see why anyone can doubt that. Uh Next question is by how many points is narrative review published? First author? I think just a, so a nonsystematic review, uh you can see it goes into the section, um you can see at three points and five points. So if you've done one narrative review and it's PUBMED cited you should get three points. The next question is by Yasmin, since you are interested in dermatology, what are the other routes into getting into dermatology other than getting into IMT then applying to dermatology? And what are the benefits of going directly into IMT than DERM versus the, says the normal Caesar root? Yeah, ca uh yeah. Um I mean, if there's more interest in dermatology, II don't, I'm not qualified to speak about dermatology until I get into spr training. But um in terms of applying to dermatology and going through the struggles, I would say, do I MT the other routes are via CST. Um doing CST one, CST two then applying and pediatrics as well. Uh So number one pediatrics, I find uh I'm not interested in pediatrics. So why would I do that? Uh CST, it's very good for your surgical skills which you do need as uh in dermatology and they look for that uh in interview. Um So CST, especially if you have kind of plastics rotations, that's perfect. Uh But you really lose out on the rest of kind of which is the biggest part of DERM, which is the medicine background of it. So I recommend doing I MT and also portfolio wise, getting into I MT will set you up for the dermatology portfolio of the Dermatology HST application because you can see all the things we've gone through. Now, all count for high specialty training. Nothing has to change apart from getting M RCP. So with that, with that, taking into account, I think I MT is, makes the most sense now doing it via the Caesar route. Caesar is post I MT. So I think you can only start a Caesar route once you've done I MT one and two, Caesar is not recognized abroad. So, if you ever wanted to go abroad, I think it would be very difficult for you to do that even though someone has signed off you as, oh, you've done the Caesar route. Now, you are a consultant. I think that is not very well established abroad at all. Um If you want to stay here, then yes, there are centers that are becoming more and more accustomed to provide a Caesar route for dermatology. Uh I'm not sure about Caesar roots in other specialties. Um But I think if you are young, uh and you've got the time to do I MT one and two and then maybe a Dermatology fellow job, I would then try and just get into, um, the N TN number training spr training of rather than the season. Next question by Eunice is, I'm sorry if I mispronounced your name, what is usually the cutoff score for shortlisting? Uh I'm, I do not know, uh It changes year on year, so I don't want to give you a false cut off. I'm sure there's data about it. Um I'm not sure whilst I go through the next question if Pauline can find a cut off score for last year for shortlisting. Um Yeah, sorry, I'll come back to that one. I'll try to find it. Next question by Sansa is for training and teaching. It's mentioned synch synchronous live teaching does recorded courses like future learn, qualify for one point. Um That's interesting because I have seen people who have got the points for the training and teaching course that's uh linked there. If, you know, people who haven't got the points, then that's quite dodgy then. Uh, but I'm not sure if that's the case. Um, training should be delivered with a duration of at least six hours of synchronous teaching time, live teaching time. I mean, there is in the course, there's a lot of teaching time. Um, I think, I think that's a new point. I think this course does get you the points for it because I've never met someone who hasn't even then if, um, if this online course doesn't give you a solid one point. There are one day free courses that should be run by your hospital trust, medical education department because they do that. So they don't have to pay for you to do an external course. Yeah. And to be fair, that course was only 45 minutes. I think I did it the other day and it wasn't, it wasn't too bad. You have to link it to your NHS account though to get it for free because otherwise you'd have to pay for it. Um Next question by ne if you have presented posters that result in abstracts being published in BMJ following the conference, which can be found on PUBMED, but don't have official IDS. Can these count as publications? Uh Unfortunately, no. Yeah. So abstracts. Here we go. I have published one or more abstracts that are not pub med sighted. So that's one point PUBMED sighted means it has to have APM ID number. Um There are lots of abstracts that when you go to a conference, they'll say, oh yeah, we'll publish your abstracts in our journal. They end up having a DO I number but not APM ID number only abstracts that are part of a larger paper. And it's the first thing you see on PUBMED only those have PM IDS. Sorry, I'm just going to quickly go back to the question of the cutoff score. Um That was asked by Eunice. Um So very kindly, Portia has said that the previous year's cut off score was 15 and the year before that it was eight. So thank you so much Portia. Um The next question is um Sansa, do we need mandate form two for quip? I don't know what a mandate form is. Uh But all I do know is you all the only thing you need is the Q pad form, the Q IP at form. I think that's the only evidence I in the messages um the next question is by India. So to clarify, if you present your systematic review and then it gets published, you can get points in both categories for this. Yeah, I don't see why not. Like if you presented your systematic review at the local uh at the at the university kind of specialty conference and then you went on to publish it. Yeah, you've got your presentation first author in a national meeting and you've got your publication, first author. Brilliant. The next question is by J um do certain specialties want specific experience slash certification or research like cardiology which is very competitive? Yeah, so what you find is to get to interview is all just a game. It's just points or like something stupid like the M sra um And then at interview when they talk about your portfolio, that's when they'll really filter out. Uh I is this person interested or not? Mm We are going into higher specialty training. Now, if you're talking about specific specialties, but in internal medicine, that's not the case. Uh in internal medicine, you can be passionate about just broadly medicine. Uh you may have a subspecialty interest and uh you can talk about that and if your projects are about that, that's great. Uh For example, at my IMT, I told them I'm doing IMT because I want to do dermatology. And yeah, they accepted that. Um next question is Madlin roughly what level of points would you want to have secured before applying. Uh So I think if you see a graph, I think on REDDIT, you could see like loads of graphs all going up and on that trajectory. Uh The competition is just going up and up. So I assume this year is gonna be even more. Uh What are the numbers you mentioned? It was like, I think it was 15 last year and then eight the year before that. Yeah. So by now, I would want to secure at least 25 to feel a bit comfortable. Um Bear in mind the total scores have now reduced in the past like last year, they counted leadership and prizes. Those two domains have been removed. So there are no more points allocated to that. Um It doesn't mean that has gone to waste because you can still write about that in your kind of white space question, which there will be in your oral application and you can talk about it at interview. It's just, it won't get you to interview if it's uh based on point. So next question is by P who um do we need CPD points during I MT or higher specialty application? I have never submitted CPD points up to this stage. So II am here which means you probably don't. I think CPD is very important for consultants because it's part of their annual appraisal and also revalidation they need to show on top of their consultant job they've done like this meeting, this conference and Game CPD S. Next question is by Portia does saying what specialty you are interested in during interview, for example, dermatology sort of go against you. No, like you've narrowed down too soon. No, I'm evidence against that. So II II, you have to be honest because they'll, they'll pick you apart otherwise, um I said straight away, even in my written kind of box, I said, look in order to do dermatology, I need to do internal medicine. This is what I've done to prepare for it, blah, blah, blah. And it's only gonna serve me well when I apply for dermatology because I, I've been thinking about dermatology for a long time. Next question is by Acantha uh the applications asks to mention why you want to do. I mt in a few 100 words, what sort of things are they looking for here? Yeah, it is like a question like back to med school, how to write your personal statement. Um It's a bit like that. I have to say I if you follow sort of making a point and then providing an example, then an explanation, you know, pe e um but specifics, I think they want to see. What kind of have you done rotations in foundation. Yeah, that's kind of solid medicine. So in mine, I wrote that I've done cardiology, gastro respiratory all in F one. these are kind of a cornerstones of uh internal medicine. So I'm very well prepared to start uh further training in this. Um And you can then talk about you if you look at the I MT specification and tailor your response to that, that shows them that you've already looked ahead about what I MT, what are the I MT requirements and this is how you prepared for them. So you can talk about the practical skills that you need to do. So sometimes in F one and F two, you've got the chance to do um kind of DC cardioversions. This is a practical skill that I MT S need to get signed off. Same thing for lumbar puncture, uh nasogastric tubes, pleural aspirations if you've done that already and you can write it in this box. Um You can see I want to do I MT because I've already started preparing for this uh career and this is how I'm showing my interest and you then talk about what are your goals in the future? So people do I mt because they need to do a group one or group two specialty. So you can talk about a subspecialty interest. I think that's the way to go about it. Next question is uh le what do you think is a feasible score for interview? Also, I have two case reports. I'm waiting for little things to submit. Um How likely is it to get impressed by blood deadline? Do you think? What do you think is a feasible school for into you. I mean, uh I would just be going off my gut feeling maybe, maybe 18 if let's say 18, uh if it was 15 last year. Um And then also I have two case reports. I'm waiting for. Oh man, this is what you, you uh it depends what your journal is if it's a, if they're like a good case reports and you're going for like decent journals, uh It's gonna be tight. I mean, 21st of November is your deadline? Really? Um uh It's difficult. Let's say you had, have you even submitted? I mean, write a followup, write a follow up. So come down later, tell me when you've submitted if you have at all. Um That's probably the most important question because then that gives you six weeks or less. And then can you talk about your curious ex um experience and how long that took you to get published? Oh, yeah, yeah. So I'll say that now then my curious experience two weeks from acceptance uh sorry, from submission to. So this is submission to acceptance. The caveat here is curious, put an embargo until they index it in Pubmed by one month. Unless you pay money, I didn't pay money. So I just waited a month. So that's two weeks. So that's six weeks in total. So there is a condition to seeing that PUBMED ID with my own eyes. Um Next question is by P who? I'm sorry if I mispronounce your name, will a certificate for presenting an oral presentation count as evidence or do I need a letter signed by a consultant? Mhm. Um I think if that's certificate isn't clear that it was a national meeting and it wasn't clear that it's uh that you are first author. I would always get extra letter signed by a consultant because your evidence needs to be slick, needs to be concise but having two pieces of evidence for a very important domain is fine. Next questions by India. Does Lee ps count as a teaching course? Do you know? Uh I don't know what that stands for. But if we answer the next question and then if Pauline looks at what leaps are and then I could probably answer. So I presented a two cycle audit in a local or M and M meeting, but the audit was not published anywhere. It was just a local audit. Does that count as a presentation? So similar to before presentations can be on something that have not been published? Uh So I hope yours was a two cycle quip and not just an audit. Hopefully you had an intervention in between the cycles, in which case, that would be an oral presentation at a local meeting, which here is two points. OK. Excellent. And I've just googled for India leep. Uh It stands for um um um it stands for leadership through education for excellent patient care, co leadership education. Mm I mean if, if that, if like kind of a blurb of that course says something about uh let's say training and teaching, if it has training and teaching methods somewhere described in uh kind of the description of that course, then that should count. I've just personally never heard of LEEPs. Next question by Piu is, can I present the same quip in two conferences? Uh mm So I think some conferences, if not most ask you to specify whether you have presented this elsewhere. Uh So that's the main barrier to doing that. If it's a case of, you've done it in like a not a good conference, but you have the opportunity to do it in a better conference. Um I think if you make some slight changes to your presentation, then you can say this is a new revised presentation I'm giving it in this conference. Then I think that should be fine. Next question um is by Asher. If I was a second. Oh, sorry, a question. Now, will we be getting an interview tip session? I mean, I remember my interview quite well. Uh I'm not sure if it's a whole lecture worth of material. Uh What I can say from my memory is that uh you have a clinical case in my uh there was um a case of septic arthritis and, and my case was uh a case of GBM glioblastoma multiform. And, but the way they ask is they'll give you the context the case description. This is how the patient presents. This is how uh what would you do next? Uh go through your examination, uh history, your examination, what's your next investigation? So then you would split that into kind of bedside uh blood test, imaging specialist. Um and then what is your differential diagnosis? Uh split that into kind of um kind of big disease domain. So, so infection inflammation, malignant blah, blah blah. And then what is your management? But management is kind of not as important at this stage. It's more about unless they were asking you about something bond or like uh hypokalemia. In which case, you do need to know because they will classify that as um essential knowledge. And if you don't know that you'll fail. So that's the clinical case. The thing with the clinical case is uh you have to be very structured just like how I structured those investigations. So uh bedside blood test imaging specialist, they love, they love this kind of tree of um this flow chart of structure um that just shows that the interview candidate has everything organized and compartmentalized in their brain. And that's a clinical case. There's this ethical station. Um that's where uh people always say like read the GMC. Good practice. I mean, I can't read 100s of pages of all that crap. Uh I think if you know the big concepts of capacity, confidentiality, uh mental Health Act, Mental Capacity Act. Uh That is kind of the big, big part of ethics that they will ask you about. So mine was about, it was COVID time. Uh this family member can't make it in or wants to speak to a family member. How can we facilitate that? Then we had to like talk about, does this family member have lasting power of attorney? What's their relationship? Does the patient consent? Uh What is the communication kind of device we can use is what's the security of that device? So like ipads, Facetime, et cetera. Um And so this is the kind of topics that you talk about and these big concepts can be applied to any sort of scenario they give you. So that's why I concentrate on the concepts rather than thousands of scenarios that could be there. Uh Those were the two big kind of non portfolio questions when it came to portfolio, you kind of just take it through the domains that is your structure, take it through the domains and then um what they do ask right at the end is do you know specifics about the I MT portfolio requirements? So do some reading about that things like CI PS. Um uh they're called CI PSC I PS. So read into that it's all online on the I MT curriculum. I mean, that wasn't really interview tip sessions, that's just briefly what my interview was like, I'm not, I'm not planning to do an interview tip sessions. If there's enough kind of um a feedback for it, then we could arrange something. Yeah, if you find it uh that it would be helpful, just write it in the feedback and then we will, we can arrange that. Um the next question. And I'm sorry, these will be the last few questions because the it's 8 p.m. is approaching. Um The next question is by Ashu. If I was a second author for a poster that was presented by the first author in a national conference, what would I need to do to show evidence for this? Second? Yes. So I am in exactly the same situation. I was a second author for something that went to oral presentation at a national conference. And I've got a certificate with my name there as second author for this specific presentation. That is all I need. Uh So if you have a certificate that has all the authors lined up and you a second author, that's fine. If they don't give you a certificate, please chase up on it. And if they just don't give you certificates because they don't ask your consultant who there's normally a consultant as your last author uh to write a letter, an official letter that says you are the second author for this poster that was presented at this national conference. Maybe sometimes you can even like Prew write it and then let them read it and then you can, they can just sign it. Yeah. Yeah. I think you have to get to the stage where you have to know that consultants won't write these letters themselves. You just draft it and then send it to them. Most of them will be fine with it and they'll sign it off. Excellent. And then last question by Sansa, I have completed an oral presentation in a national meeting. However, I only have mail that I've been selected and some more follow up emails. Would that be enough? Many legs? I think it's dodgy territory. I think uh if you can get the national meeting to give you a certificate, especially if you've done an oral presentation for them. That's a bit weird. Uh They should give you a certificate. Uh Mail chains don't look nice in your portfolio when you submit. Uh So stay away from and the alternative if you can't get the certificate, which is like the second option is getting the consultant letter. Yeah. And ideally prewritten by yourself and then they can just sign it. Yeah. No, I would say not even ideally always, just always prewriting it. Get it in the same sort of format as the matrix and then can't go wrong. Brilliant. So that's it. Thank you so much, Doctor S for all your insight and all your um time. Thank you everyone for joining us as well and for all your amazing Q and A questions. Um that was hopefully helpful. And um if you could put it in the feedback, whether you find it helpful, what else you might need? What else would be helpful? We could organize those types of sessions. Um And we're always looking for feedback. So uh that would allow you to have a certificate as well for attendance and then you could put it on your portfolios too. So, yeah, that's it. Thank you so much as well. Thank you, Madeleine. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Yeah, thank you guys. Thank you for the very good questions. Thanks doctor.