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Mary's, but I also went to Imperial a few years ago and I did an A FP or as it's now called an SFP. And we're going to be talking about the application process and my old friend Dan will be doing the interview, interview discussion. Oh, someone got some site feedback. So make sure your mics muted to save me happy to hear my own voice. But right, in terms of what we're going to be doing, um We took out some stats vaguely what I did just to give you some context, things you might want to think about tips of doing white space and some examples of them and random pieces of unsolicited advice that you may or may not agree with, but I think might be helpful for someone who is in your position as I was in a few years ago. Um What did I do? Uh Well, I firstly I decided not to go for London. Um I appreciate, I only stayed away for about two years, but I thought it would be nice to go somewhere different and a lot of other things that you should consider about not going to London. Um I decided to apply for Oxford and Manchester. So northwest of England and Oxford is just the Thames Valley Diary, but it's specifically called the Oxford SFP. Um You have two slots as you probably know, I got interviews at both and I had interviews at both one week after the other whilst trying to prep for the SJT. It was not a fun time, it was just a run up to Christmas whilst we were still trying to do firms et cetera. I got an offer from Oxford and I ranked, oh God, I think, oh, I can't remember. It was, I didn't get an outright offer from Manchester. I think it was possible that I might have got one on Cascade at the very end. But it yeah, did less well on the Manchester interview. And yeah, that's basically me, I did an AFP looking mainly at medical education and medical leadership and leadership education. Firstly, if you're thinking about where to go and you're thinking about London versus not London, which is how a lot of people tend to differentiate it, I suppose just some things that you might want to consider, I suppose I'm biased. But I do think these are important to say, firstly, you remember that you've got two choices. So just applying for just London does decrease your chances. London only does academic, er, SFPS. So you are very much saying that's what you're interested in if you want to do an educational leadership thing. This is wasted on you going to London. Um Others can be less competitive. There are stats on this, but the truth is London isn't the most competitive SFP as of the most recent set of stats, which are not that recent. Um But you can play those odds if you like that might be helpful. Um The thing that I really think is important is that the entry criteria at different places might be way more up your street. You might find that you would definitely interview based on their criteria at a certain place versus London, for example. So maybe those odds will help play towards your favor and maybe sway you in your own decision. Things that people might not be aware of is that the SFP block is not paid well. So because you are not doing an on call, so generally you're not, I'm pretty sure you never do. You wouldn't be doing nights, you wouldn't be working weekends. And a lot of the F one F two doctor salary is based off those extra times that's called your banding. And how antisocial your job is. The truth is that's probably that's not going to happen. You're going to have a 95 gig, which is great for four months in terms of having your life back. It's normally during the F two and four months of that means you don't get paid as high as you normally would be. So if you really want to be earning more money. You probably shouldn't be doing. The sf the other thing to bear in mind is that the London cost of living is obviously higher than in most places. So that will hit harder in London than it would in different places. That being said Oxford is a very high standard of living as well. So going to Oxford from my personal didn't help either. So bear that in mind. And perhaps one of the most important things is that a rotation combination might really suit you. So if you think you are destined to be a vascular surgeon, for example, finding an S with a vascular job, sounds like a good idea. There might not be that many of those therefore applying to those SFS would be sensible. So look around, shop around and then whittle it down. I hope those are sensible considerations, those things that I thought about. I want to do some stats discussion here, not the stats that you're thinking of, but stats about this application process and I want to sort of dispel this myth that Imperial is just intrinsically tied to the SFP, that this is what we do that this is we're great at this. So in this slide, you can see a table which looks at the number of people per med school who get into the SFP. And this is as of I think it was, this is my year. So and yes, in theory, 36 people, if you look down, fourth down is Imperial, it says 36 people got into the SFP which is more, it is more than any other institution. But what they don't point out which is what happened, which is what spoken about the year before they had stats on us previously, they are no longer releasing them. Is that the offer acceptance rate. If you like of Imperial students, the offers that were given was not particularly high at all. So we just put in a lot more people, a lot more people apply to the AFP Imperial than most other institutions. We just like putting our hats in the ring. We are not particularly better at getting students into the SFP. So don't sit there and think because I'm Imperial, this is the logical thing to do. This is what we should be doing. We as an institution are not particularly amazing at getting people in. We just encourage a lot of AFP chatter for context. Dundee has a higher percentage rate in this one set of stats. I wouldn't read too much into this. I just think it's worth bearing in mind that this isn't something you have to do. It's not a given that you even apply for this. It's extra. OK? And I don't want this mentality about superiority about it. I really don't think it's about that at all as you guys will probably know better than I do a lot of things have changed in the last couple of years. Obviously, the E PM is over, SAT is out the window and that has actually big ramifications for the SFP as well. I don't know how it's going to affect people. The number of people applying no idea. But I know that previously the way long listing and shortlisting worked, some places did have an arbitrary cut off. London was very famous for it. They would call in one day. So you'd find out near instantly whether you were going to be considered or not because they would just pick a deci and run with it. And that's no longer the case, which I think is good in terms of there are plenty of academic people who just didn't come 1st, 2nd, whatever de A and, and I think they will get better academics that way. But bear that in mind, things that I would highlight to you, which you might not know is that if you're playing to your strengths, say, for example, the interview is you feel like you get really nervous that it's really difficult for you, you get tongue tied and you struggle in it, just bear in mind that Yorkshire and Humber doesn't have any interview, they just have a portfolio. And if you think you can better represent yourself there and you'd like to go to Yorkshire and Humber as an option, do consider that similarly with Wales, you can they do it in a completely different way. They don't do it via the AFP. If you're in your mind, you say your family in Wales, for example, you want to go back to Wales, you don't need to even think about this process until you're actually allocated to Wales. I have no idea what that process is like after you've been allocated to Wales during the FP. But those are differences that you need to bear in mind in terms of other changes about White space, things have changed recently in terms of the number of white space questions. So it's now all very much centralized. There's only five questions I think and they're all centralized rather than the option of having two separate sets, which is what I had when I applied. So things have changed and things are always changing, but try and play to your strengths is a recommendation I said before. And I'd still say that again in terms of the timeline, we are now in the timeline. Hopefully you either have seen them started writing or looking at some white space. Don't be worried if you haven't, that's fine, but they are available to look at. They're incredibly generic and the window opens on the 20 of September. So in about two weeks time, it's open for about two weeks time and then they will whittle people down via some cloak and dagger process portfolio points, whatever and they'll interview between November and December. It's quite a wide variety of interview days. But the latest and earliest to 10th of November 7th of December, for those of you who don't know what a cascade is or what that is. When we, when, when you first offer people SFP jobs, there is quite a chance that someone who interviewed very well at one place might also interview well at another and they might get offered two jobs, they can only take one, they might take neither. And then that other job frees itself up. That job then gets cascaded down. So the people who, if they had a rank order like they did at Manchester, they'll decide who gets what and which order and they get offered them in a rolling thing called a cascade. So every week it was like a Wednesday, I think it was Oriel would update. And if you were, say, say they had 24 jobs, you were the 25th person, but one of the people in the 24 didn't take their job, they went elsewhere or didn't take anything, you would then be first in line to get that next job offered. You would only get their job. It's a take it or leave it. If you reject it, you are out of the pool and done with that happens at least like 23 times normally. And that's just because they don't want to waste jobs. And then afterwards in the, there might be a thing called a clearing which I don't think is commonly got to, but Cascade is very much thing where people do get jobs. So just bear that in mind. But it is a bit soul destroying. Having to wait again and again to see if you're going to get a job or not. So, I would just let it ride and if you get off a job after it's fine, but assume you're not. Ok. That's the rough timeline. So hopefully a bit more equated as to what's going on in terms of the sfs at your disposal, the different places, there are 16 of them, I think. And you can go down. There's this lovely big table actually, which I screenshot of there. What I've gleaned from it having had a look myself is that London is basically exclusively academics. So if you are only interested in doing academic projects, then London is somewhat sensible actually because that's what you're going to more like to get. The odds are decent for what applying for. But similarly, in the reverse, east of England has a whole education section which is like 20 something jobs. So that is quite a lot of education jobs you might apply for. And East Midlands got a lot of leadership jobs. So if you are trying to maximize your chances based on that, look at those kind of places, I can't emphasize this next point enough, which is that you should really do your own research and ask people who are currently there. So for example, I spoke to a friend of mine at the year above who had applied for the SP and got into Oxford and I asked her about her experiences what she thought of it. And she told me something that I didn't quite realize, which is that you get to do whatever you want, you pick your supervisor and you run with the topic and they are very open minded about what you can do at Oxford. And I don't mean to plug this. But what was good for me there is that I wanted to do medical education and leadership stuff. I didn't want to do the regular academic things. And therefore Oxford's academic only placements weren't really academic only. They were do what you would like and they are very open about it. So other places might be like that as well. Ok. People are often very flexible to try and let you do what you want to do when you've got a vision and a cane. So ask around see how flexible things are this one you particularly want to do and you can often push the envelope a bit and make it fit what you're interested in. So that is the most important point from this kind of slide deciding where you want to go. I can't tell you how to do that. But these are some things that I think are important to consider. So the things that you would not write on a white space question are things about like, oh, yeah, I've heard, I've heard Epic is a really good it system and I just can't handle Sirna anymore. I want to be, that's a boring thing that it does help your real life decision making or that, you know, you want to stay in London because there is a 24 hour prep in Chelsea that would not look good in an interview. But it might be very important to you in your lifestyle. But I honestly say it's really important to people enjoyed it when they went there. And do you like the place if you don't want to ever live in that sort of place don't apply there? Very obvious. But also what they can give you is university affiliation is very helpful for opening other doors, research doors, getting you access to papers and journals or when you're doing research. So if you're affiliated with a big university, they'll have lots of packages like Imperial does. When we all take for granted, we are going on the library and finding everything and getting access. But someone pays for that and it's a university typically and they just might have, you're really interested in major trauma is good for surgeons in terms of if you want to see anything trauma related places that have got a major trauma center are where, where those cases are going to be. They are not brought in to every random DG. So those are some things to bear in mind and I hope you've already thought about them. But if not that just on your checklist in your mind, right? This is about hedging your bets, which I mentioned earlier. This is an excerpt from north west of England. So this is one of the reasons I applied to Manchester when I was in your position. And it was because I looked through that portfolio and I went, hang on, I can add up the scores myself and see where I'm at. You know, I have the BSC, I had a poster and I had one publication and, and that got me some points and I was like, oh, well, actually, you only need, as you can see in the slide, you only needed 30 points and there was already quite a good way there. So as long as I didn't mess up the white space too much, I had a good chance of getting an interview. And for me that gave me confidence and that's one of the reasons I applied again, I'm not going to write that in the white space or in an interview, but you are allowed to hedge your bets and steer things towards your own, your own game. So I would encourage you to do that in terms of white space questions. As I said before, they're centralized, the word count is now shorter than what it used to be. And these are the questions. They are wonderfully vague and boring. Enjoy. And we're going to go through a few questions and you're going to, it's a bit like reviewing all, you know, your, what do you call it? You cas applications. So you're all going to enjoy laughing at what I wrote, but we'll go through it together and I'll try and show you what I thought was, was useful. They are incredibly generic. You don't need to answer some of them and places like London, I think Oxford have completely disregarded it. So bear that in mind in terms of um white space. Um planning goes like this. I would say you'll read it and reread the questions again and again. But they're not that complicated now, they're quite vague and you know, you plan it, write a draft. I do think that is helpful. I don't really plan many things that I write in life and you probably haven't either, but I do think it is helpful for this kind of thing where you need a structured approach and then review it with someone. We'll talk about that later and then just keep reviewing and fine tuning. I don't think I've said anything that's vaguely new to you. Clearly, you all wrote decent personal statements to get into medical school. So there should be something that up your streets, the themes that you include and this isn't just related to the question, but general things that we are looking for when we are looking at white space, questions are finding more about you academic, non academic features. What, why, why on earth do you want to be there? And um things like leadership teamwork are always important. Um My actual pieces of advice though are as follows. One, you are a clinician, you are not an academic. Ok? And I mean that in terms of that is your first duty? Ok. Your first duty is to the patient is not to a research board. And if they wanted a pure academic, they would hire one. The thing that you bring to the party is by being a clinician and an academic or an educator or a leader, rather than just a manager. That is what you are bringing to the game. So you need to keep that at the center of your thinking. If you go away from that, they will be surprised and it won't look as good for you with the questions. You can play jump rope a bit with how they ask the questions and we'll talk about that. But ultimately, you need to stick to their brief and run with it. You will, it will not be as good a question in terms of marking, if you answer what you want to say and just shoehorn it in rather than anything that they actually wanted to know because they would just consider it useless. They'll there and it's all very well and good. But this is not relevant kind of thing. I would be fairly humble about writing things, I suppose if you, if you've got a phd and are going to be still doing a postdoctoral fellowship whilst being a medical student and you God's green. I mean, you're amazing then fine. But the chances are you probably aren't and I'm not. And I would stick to being humble like that. Don't sound cocky and some advice from my mum, which I don't write on the slide is that you can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter. So not everything is going to the things you've done might not be the world's best thing ever, but you can make them sound good and there is an art to that and doing it well. And that's what White Space questions are all about. The thing that I can't emphasize enough more than anything is checking the specification of who they want and whether you think you fit it now, this is just the London one that I found. And I do feel bad for you guys that they just seem to want first degree first class prizes, which is a bit rude, a bit inflated. And thankfully, hopefully a lot of you will have bcs, maybe first classes and maybe a publication or two, but that's the kind of thing they want in London and they will be putting a lot of points towards that. I have no doubt what they also want, if you see here is they want you to abide by the UK FPO personal specification that is worth having a skim read because in life when you apply for jobs and this is not just for SFP, they will all have these person specifications that you need to look at and to me, I treat them as mark schemes, ok? Because they need you to tick off everything in that personal speck to show that you meet there. You're going to be a decent doctor. Here's the good evidence of why this is why we should interview you because if you fail on those points, then you might not get to the second round because in my mind, they can't interview all of you because everyone puts in multiple applications, it will take forever. They can only interview a few and this is an easy way to cull OK? So just bear these points in mind. I've only highlighted a few because they were there. And I thought again, patient as the central focus is always one of our thinking points. So bear that in mind. Don't ignore that. I think that's a common mistake. What we're going to do now is go through some planning of questions. This is going to be planning a generic teaching question. I think this is almost the exact same in my year as it was for yours apart from it as a specialized foundation program. For example, the question, the crux of this question is please give one example in your medical student career of a teaching experience and its significance to your application. Just one I would say you can play a jump rope with this a little bit. You can be, you can blur the lines. I picked med ed because I did some a few years ago and I put that as my med ed experience. But if you like as a Venn diagram that encapsulated lots of other things which I then spoke about. So I spoke about doing a lecture series and running that I spoke about doing a poster and I spoke about doing a podcast afterwards. So that gave me lots of things to say um while being in one experience hub. So I think you can play with the language a little bit. It didn't hurt me. I hope it doesn't hurt you what I wrote. Let's go through this just I think this is just helpful to see what someone else did. And I apologize if you don't think it is, I would say the way to write these things is to provide a setting for what you're going to say and then provide some content that they can understand and then provide some, take home messages and understanding about what you've done and why it's useful to you. So with this, yeah, I did a lecture series and I gave some stats about how many lectures it was. Why should they care, it was lots of students involved in. So things like problem solving. But if you like, they want to hear the skills that you've learned as a result of these. So they need to make logical sense. Like yeah, talking to 10 different people all the time will help your communication skills being a part of a team building, teamwork skills and examples of why that was the case. And then you might add some other narrative parts to it talking about, I hate the word. So for example, if I'm being rude, I'd say I hate the word passionate here. It's the most common word that I think is included in UCAS applications. So I would critique myself there and just be like, say something a bit different, please. But what we're trying to do here is set the scene, make a point about why it's good and you need to explain why it was good and why it's helpful. Otherwise you just sound like you're listing off your achievements and that, that just sounds not humble if that makes sense. Um in terms of going on from this because I could talk about multiple examples. I went, oh OK. Well, we did, we did this series and then we did a poster for it and we, that's sort of an introduction to academic medical education. And I think that is something that I'd like to continue exploring. And that's part of my career goals similarly thinking about how you should be real. So the thing I've highlighted is being realistic. I can't emphasize that enough. And I like including this in the question. I think when you approach an AFP, it's not a phd, it's not a post doc, it's, you're going to get a flavor for doing research, medical education or leadership. You are not going to be a fully fledged academic educator or leader. By the end of this, you are going to have some exposure to it. You can only achieve so much in four months. So that's the kind of thing that I like to say. If you say you want to find the cure, the cure for thyroid cancer in four months, you are going to look silly. So don't overstate your aims. I hope you are starting to see the way in which I'm structuring these answers. And I would recommend doing that for you. I think it helped, made things easier to write. OK. This is an excerpt from the career goals question that we had and this was again just talking about, oh, you know what made this place good. So whilst it was meant to be about career goals, why do I want to apply here? And what do I want to do? The problem here? And I will point this out to you is that if you're applying for places that both need the same SFP question, white space question, I would avoid named dropping the same place because they will clearly know where you've applied elsewhere. Or if I applied to Manchester and Oxford and Oxford had this SPP question and I only answered it as if I wanted to go to Oxford. It doesn't look very good to Manchester. So you might be less able to name drop and you might need to keep it a bit more vague saying, well, I know there is a major trauma center available here that I would love to be able to access because I think it will be important to my training in the idea of becoming a surgeon in the future. So bear that in mind. You probably can't name drop, et cetera. As much as I would have liked to. Some people literally reference to a specific researcher at a department saying they will be great to work on. I've spoken to them. I want to do this. I want to do that. That's less easy. Now, unless you are applying to say one that includes SFP and one that disregards it. Um teamwork question team, my question is incredibly generic. It says the phrase relevant to your foundation training. And I again, maybe bent the rules a bit here. I would say that that doesn't need to be necessarily medical. And I think as long as you justify it and justify it, well, it's fine. So the two facets of my personality at med school were basically opera and Med Ed and I was treasurer and then president afterwards, this is not important. But the important part is if you've done a club or society and whatever it is and you did a committee position that can help you answer this question. And so I spoke about fairly common things. This won't be unique to opera. For example, it was talking about funding was poor. What did we do about it? I worked with my team to do something about it and we saved some money. That's the outcome that we got because it is important to save some form of outcome. But that's not the whole point of it. A me, the thing that I tried to therefore draw from it is that well, we didn't all have the right answer. And there's a thing I come to in the next slide is talking about working with my treasurer to get these grant fundings and things that helped this work. And it's because I realized that my treasurer who, who was Dan Feiner, who was the old Ism president at the time. So he knew far more about grants than I ever would have done. So therefore, it was better that he led this than me. So even though I was meant to be the leader, the better thing to do was to step back and let him do it. So do you see how these weird Minucci were quite helpful for painting things in the NHS? Like, oh, I realized even though say, you, you're meant to be the leader of this project that they are better at doing this, that I should let them run with it and use their expertise. That's an example of leadership, but also in terms of good team working. And hopefully, you can see again, I'm doing the structure of here is the context. Here is what I learned from it. Here's what's important about it. Here's why you should care. And finally, with this, the thing I would also say is you need to talk about why your example is relevant. There needs to be a justification, a thing that I can't overstate enough is that leadership is not the same as teamwork. So this is the reason I mentioned a lot about being treasurer rather than being president because it was about learning to work with a big group. If you just pick your teamwork, for example, as being the leader, you look a bit cockier and these things aren't the same. So don't conflict the two. OK. That's a piece of advice I think is again a, a common misconception and then feedback. So let's say you've written these and you like, OK, I need to send them somewhere. I would say there are plenty of people you can send it to, but the problem is sending it to too many people, opens you up to issues because they might disagree. You might find it difficult to trust one more than the other and they might send it back to you the night before it's due, which is not very helpful because it means that you have to really rush to change things. So I would say trust someone who you think will provide good feedback and average experience in doing it, et cetera will do it quickly to the extent that it's feasible for you to act on that feedback. And those are the two main points, really someone who will do it, do it to a good standard, but do it so that you can actually act on it afterwards. And these are just some suggestions. I think we all in our friendship group, we all looked over each others and that might not work for you at all. But there are lots of different people you can ask. But also remember if everyone asks the same person, I'm assuming people won't. But if you know, if everyone just ask the most famous person that's called like, you know, am is Kari Mir and I'm sure they will not have time. They might be really busy. You don't necessarily want to ask the busiest person, you know, you want someone who will donate time to you. Ok. Um Finally, I I think this is probably some of the more important point actually, this last point. So this is rounding off. We've spoken about the white Space, some changes that have been made. We've spoken about how you can write some white space questions and some idea about the stats of applying the context of it. My final question for you is you don't have to do this. Do you actually want to do this? And what are your reasons for doing it? And a thing that I would say from personal experiences is there is a lot of ego involved with the SFP and I think it's misplaced. I, I think you need to bear in mind that it can be a bit emotionally annoying and distressing to not get something that you want. So cars completely on the table. I got first round Cascade Oxford Jobs. So I ranked highly, but I didn't rank highly enough to get it in the first round. So that I remember having a really crap time when Dan, my housemate was about to come on and got his job and I felt so inferior and stupid and I was stressed out and I was tired having done all the interviews. So it was a bit of a load in my mind and I definitely felt a bit bruised and battered and I then had this whole rollercoaster of them getting an offer, which was great. But by that point in time, I was very, very burnt out and stressed. So bear that in mind. Do you want to open this door or not? Are you willing to accept a potential ego bruising? OK. I can't over emphasize this point enough in that I think it's a great opportunity. And I'm going to say that in a few seconds time, but this is not to the end if you can be in it loads of people. In fact, the majority of people become academics, educators or leaders having not done this program. OK? This is an extra and what it is good is it gives you time. OK? Which is a commodity that you don't often have in late stage clinical practice. But this is not your career is, your life is going to be perfect afterwards. This is not the case. So I hope people can get off their high horses and stop pedestals the SFP, you don't need to prove anything. I can't listen when you decided that you wanted to be a doctor at whatever age, you didn't decide that you wanted to be an SFP doctor. This is not part of that and you are no less of a doctor. If anything, you are slightly more of a doctor by the end because you've done an extra rotation rather than doing an academic rotation. So this isn't something you need to do. The whole point of final, it is getting through it, surviving, enjoying seeing your friends before you get scattered to the four corners of the UK and becoming a good competent clinical doctor. This is not that so bear that in mind. And if sitting in a lab for four months per petting things, sounds like hell for this. Thing then don't apply. I mean, I didn't do that but, you know, bear that in mind. Right. I can't emphasize this enough, I suppose more than anything is that there are more important things, life happens to you. It's happened during med school, I'm sure. But F one, F two can be really quite a difficult time for lots of people and stressing about academia and all this sort of stuff is not, is not the priority in my opinion for foundation doctors. And I found it quite difficult having the interviews and it was a lot of effort being really tired. But, and I can't, I can't completely crap on it. There is a reason I took the job ultimately, four months in year two of foundation year to fix your life a bit, have a life again. And to, you know, working 9 to 5 is a luxury for a doctor at times and to have time to get your portfolio in order to do some prepping to plan your next step in your career as well as doing this academic work is really important. It's really nice. I really enjoyed that. And that was one of the main sell points that the Vicky my friend of the year above gave to me is Harry. I don't think you understand how valuable having four months off during F two to sort things out is how valuable that can be. So for all I say this is a good opportunity, but it's just an opportunity and there are plenty of other great opportunities that come again in life. You know, don't think that this is the be on and end all. But if you want to do it and I've still not put you off or I've enthused you more than great. I hope that's been helpful and that is everything the feedback form will come for at the end of Dan's slide. So he will take over shortly if, for some reason you like hearing the sound of my voice, Dan and I do a podcast which we're going to do some more episodes on. So if you want to help revise with things, if you've got senior surgery at Mary's, I'll see you there, specialty surgery, but I hope that was ok. And um, yeah, enjoy the rest of the talk. Uh Dan, are you there? Yes, I am here. Sorry. Wonderful. But I will stop sharing. Yeah. Can you stop sharing? So I can there? Wonderful. And let me just uns spotlight, right? Get yourself sorted out. Ok. Um, so can you see my slides? I can see your slides. I can't see you. Yeah, let me put my face on here. Oh, great. Ok. Hello everyone. Um, so, um, my name is Dan, um, as Harry has alluded to, I am friends with Harry, but um, primarily I am um at the moment doing a phd here in Oxford, um in cardiovascular medicine. Um, but I also did an A FP. Um I also went to Imperial. Um So a very similar situation. Um I also did my A FP here in Oxford. Um But the interview advice in my talk will be um not just pertaining to Oxford but will pertain to all different types of interviews. Um So, um without, for a do, let's go ahead if you have any questions, please put them in the chat as we're going, I'm keeping an eye on the chat just to make sure there's things we can answer as they come up. If not, I think we've got time for Q and A at the end as well, haven't we, Harry so fine. So maybe you want to save them to the end. So, um let's just talk about the SFP interview. Um So today we'll just have a look at um the general format of the interview and then split it broadly into two, which would be the clinic call in the academic aspects of the interview. The academic station is then further subdivided into about what I would say, four broad categories of questions that you might be faced with. And again, we can have a think about those when we get there. So the first thing you need to ask others, do you need to interview? And Harry has actually already touched on this yourself. Harry has already touched on this already. But the key thing really is that for Wales and Yorkshire and Hum there's no interview Yorkshire and Humber have their own self declaration of evidence a bit like a core and medical surgical training. Um Wales, as Harry says, will allocate after the foundation program. I don't know what it will be based on this year because there's no SJ T and there's no ep M but everywhere else interviews, these are all the interview dates so possibly make a note of those now so that you know, them, there are some Scotland, for example, haven't confirmed yet. Um But otherwise everyone interviews beyond Wales and the LA and Humber and everyone interviews online, which is a new thing as of about the last three years. Um due to COVID. So what's the general format of the interview so broadly, they're all online. Typically, it tends to be one panel, I think North West England now have two panels, they seem to suggest in their, their online information. Um And by panel, I mean, a group of people that will sit and judge you over the internet. Um There are varying numbers and types of stations, the vast majority tend to have two stations and that will be one clinical and one academic station. And you know, if you combine that with the last point, typically, it tends to be one group of people, usually about two or three people who will sit on a screen and watch you as you do two stations, one after another, some places like um I, I think Cambridge and some other places do a longer station that intersperses both clinical and academic questions. Ultimately, the same at the end of the day, you're being tested on all the same stuff, but perhaps it can be a little bit easier if you have it structured into two separate stations. I'm happy to say, you know, in my experience, take Oxford, for example, it was very structured and very separate. They did 10 minutes specifically on clinical and 10 minutes specifically on academic. It was all broken up and even within the clinical station, 10 minutes was broken up into 25 minutes s lots to subdivide it even further. So just be aware that that might be the case. I think Norwich has suggested they've got three stations, a clinical station, a station where they get to critically praise and abstract and a station where you talk about your research plans. So again, I think we've been through it a lot already but do do your research on what your interview requires and most of the information is there and if it's not on there, um if it is not on there, er information pages on the websites have a look for freedom of information requests. There are a couple of freedom information requests, especially F Roxton and Cambridge because typically they are very um typically an interview lasts about 20 minutes in total. The longest I've found has been 40 minutes you may find that if you are doing an interview mainly tends to be London. But there are other interviews, for example, such as Norwich where it seems like you might be asked to critically praise an abstract that's provided that you may have 40 minutes or so. I think London specifically says 14 minutes or has done in the past to pre read the abstract before you go into the interview, so be aware of your timings. Um And then again, sometimes you interview slots are bookable and sometimes they're pre allocated. I think London, you used to be able to book your slots. Certainly, at one point, um Oxford and Cambridge, you certainly can't. Um So just be aware that sometimes you might have some flexibility, but the vast majority won't be able to allocate you a slot because it's a bit of a logistical nightmare otherwise. So now you know what the interview looks like a little bit. The first question is, is how do you prepare for the interview? And I suppose the key things are you think they are important? So if your clinical aspect, OK, the clinical part of the interview has the purpose of discerning candidates who look like they will be competent and safe fy ones from those who look like they won't be. And so what you really want to come across during the clinical interview interview is that you are a competent, safe and knowledgeable medical student who will make a competent, safe and knowledgeable that one, the way they do this typically is through a to e assessments of acute medical emergency cases. So, you know, really good way of preparing for your clinical interview would be to prepare beforehand full A two E assessments including investigation and management for all kinds of acute clinical scenarios. Bonus is that this is great for your finals revision. It is essentially very similar to your acute acute cases station in your finals osis. So that's step one for clinical step two is to have a think about some of the academic questions and we'll talk about the academic questions a bit later. I wouldn't go completely unprepared. You know, it's a reasonably important interview if you really want to do an AFP or SFP. So I would not think about it and I definitely would prepare some bullet points practice. I would say beyond everything else. This is the most important thing you have to practice. And it's been for many of you, it will be now coming up to six years since you last had an important life changing interview like this. I say life changing, it's probably not life changing, but it seems important. Um And so, um, if you don't practice, then you, that's definitely going to get to you on the day. It's really nerve wracking. Um And um, so I would really, really recommend and the great thing about practicing friends is if you got other people who are applying for the A SFP. Um Then you can give each other feedback and you'll learn from each other's mistakes, you'll get better together. So I really recommend practicing friends. When I was praying for my interviews. I practiced with multiple different people and that was really, really helpful. Um And see if you can arrange some mock interviews. I think I arranged about four or five different people to um to give me a mock interview. And that was from, I got my personal tutor. Um I had friends who are SFP doctors elsewhere. Um, one of my academic supervisors um and even just a random consultant that um didn't really have any other um particular um interest in academia. But just so anyone really who might be willing to give you a mog would be a really, really valuable experience. Again, practice with friends is one thing, but then practicing with someone who gives you a sort of structured formal assessment, will a show you where your weaknesses are and B will make the day itself a little bit less scary. What I would not recommend doing is spending extortionate amounts of money on courses that promise that you will get an A FP place or they tell you how to get on to the A FP. Um I, I think a, I think it's wrong that people charge money for this kind of thing. Academia shouldn't be gate kept by people who want lots of money from you and it shouldn't be exclusive and only accessible to people who have lots of money. But what I would say is that to succeed and get an SSFP, you do not need to attend these courses. They do not give you anything that you cannot get by yourself. The only benefit of these courses is convenience and you pay for the convenience of having all the information that you could get freely otherwise dumped in front of you in one sitting. Um So I would not recommend that personally. And I'm aware that make a medic do a cheap course. I think it's 15 lbs and the money goes to charity. That one probably is worth going to because the money goes to charity and it's not very expensive, but there are some places that charge 150 lbs or whatever for a course. I wouldn't recommend it. Ok. So let's just talk about preparing for um the clinical part of the interview. I mean, any interview preparation really should start probably once you submitted your application. If you wait until you get your invitation to interview, it's probably too late. Um My interview invitation for Oxford came uh I think it was seven or eight days before the interview itself. So I wouldn't wait until you get invited to interview to start thinking about preparing start now. Um Not only will it be helpful for your SFP interview, but it will be really helpful for future interviews. You know, once you get past foundation year one and two training, you will have to attend interviews if you want to apply for academic local fellowships, core training places. So actually, it's really, really helpful. Anyway, so I would get started. Um If you think about the clinical station, essentially, it's like your finals Acute Care station. Ok. What you often get presented with across 10 minutes is it can be between one and three acute medical or surgical cases and they will expect you to run through how you would assess and manage that case. Ok. If they have multiple cases, often they will include a combination of but not exclusively patients who are critically unwell patients who are unwell, but who might soon be critically unwell, sorry and non urgent patients who are not necessarily requiring emergency medical attention, but certainly may have some complex ethical components to their management and assessment as well. Here is a great example. This is an example from the London A SFP handbook and this is exactly the kind of thing that you could be faced with. Um You know, here you can see the scenario is that you're an fy one and tra orthopedics and there's one patient who is unwell and upset. Um you have another patient who is critically unwell because she is short of breath, can't speak tachycardic. Um And then you have a third case that the patient is not especially unwell. Um but potentially um poses um ethical implications um for other parts of their care. So, um this is what you might be faced with. And the question essentially is going to be how do you proceed? And the key thing is to prioritize. So what they want you to do is they want you to prioritize, which basically see you've got to be realistic if you're an fy one in that situation on call. And, you know, I think this scenario is specified that you're consultants in clinic and your registrars in theater. Ie you have no one else to help you right now, then you need to make the safest decision. You need to demonstrate your safe F 51, you need to demonstrate you're putting patient safety above everything else, ok? You may want to see one patient over another. You may think that something is important, but ultimately, you have to prioritize in terms of clinical need. How do we prioritize the best and probably most unbiased way of prioritizing. It's actually using your A to E framework and hopefully you will come across the A to E assessment by now as final years. But we think about airway problems as being the most urgent because if you haven't got an airway, there is kind of no hope of continuing life, ok? If you've got an airway, but you can't breathe, that's the second level of priority if you've got an airway and your breathing, but you've got no circulation. That's the third level of priority. So prioritize in terms of clinical need. Ok. And that's the first thing they want you to do. Some people say, oh, get more information first. I think the thing is you've only got a few minutes to be able to go through a case. You can say, oh, I would like XYZ information, but often you don't necessarily have that information to hand and sometimes you do have to make decisions with the information you're given. So I would probably say based on the information I've been given my priority, my priority would be XYZ justify it. My priority is patient number two because patient number two has got a potentially a breathing or an airway problem. And then you can talk about getting more information later if that's appropriate. I mean, I would say at this point, once you prioritized, it might be worth mentioning safety netting for non priority patients. So often if I'm, when I was practicing the way I would approach it, I would say, you know, well, patient two would be my priority for XYZ reason. Um but you know, before I attend patient two, if I have time, I'll give a quick call to the staff looking after patient one and you can either try and get a little bit more information. You could talk about basic inter informations. If there is a nurse with the patient, they can do a, they could potentially get bloods put in a cannula. So these are all excellent interventions that are worth doing in the meantime, whilst you're with your priority patient, and then when you come back to see patient number two, suddenly a load of things have been done and your job is a bit easier. The other thing you could say is that it might be worth alerting your senior at this point that there are multiple unwell patients in the hospital. So I might say, you know, I can only be in one place once I will go and see patient two, they're my top priority if I can, I try and get in touch with my registrar and theater. If I believe in them, just to let them know that there's multiple unwell patients in the hospital, I'm going to see this one and when they're finished in theater or if there's anyone else around, it might be helpful for them to go and see the second patient as an example. Ok? Just be realistic about it. Um Don't try and be in multiple places at once and then you get on to assessing a patient. Ok. So then you have to actually get into your A to e assessment, right? How did I do this? So what I do, I mean, I just, I've got a word document and I wrote up. Now I caveat this with the fact that when you do an A two assessment, it needs to be specific, it needs to be flexible, it needs to be adaptable to the case that you see in front of you, right? So you're not going to use the same A two E assessment. You're not going to put out a major hemorrhage protocol for every single patient might be relevant to the patient's bleeding. Um You're not going to start a timer for every single patient. If the patient is seizing, it might be worth starting a timer at the beginning. But I've got this A to V assessment and this, I put in all the sort of different assessments, investigations and interventions that you might want to think about. And I practice this, I think every day for a couple of weeks before my interview and that was really, really helpful um very, very briefly because um I don't want to spend too long on this, but, you know, just think about each aspect of your A T assessment in terms of investigations and assessments. So, you know, airway, how do we assess an airway? We look in the airway for secretions, we listen to the airway for the sound of air or for Stridor. Um If that, if that's an abnormal sound of gurgling, we feel, can we feel breath coming out of the airway? Um interventions? What things can we do the airway? Can we maneuver head tilt, chin, lift, jaw thrust? Think about adjuncts NP airways. Can we think about eye gels and intubation is beyond really the scope for as an fy one. But you know, if a patient has an unsafe airway, do we need to call anesthetics to think about intubation? So think about it in terms of assessment and interventions at each stage. Same with breathing. Ok. Um again, with breathing assessment, look, listen, feel, look for. So can we see the chest rising? Um can we see any signs of respiratory distress, intercostal recessions, tracheal tug, nasal flaring. Listen. Do we hear any abnormal sounds when we also sort of chest, is there wheezing? Is there crepitus feel? Can we feel bilateral chest expansion and when we percuss the chest, do we hear stony, dullness on one side? Um And I think about again, basic interventions, are they low saturations give oxygen? Um you know, do a chest x-ray arterial blood gas if you wanna know the po two, do they need ventilation? Again, that's a little more specialist. Um And you could do exactly the same for, for all of the aspects of the A two assessment, um specific things about circulation. So, if you think about um major hemorrhage protocol, if someone's bleeding, what time is the right time to put out a major hemorrhage protocol? Well, once you know that a patient's got a major hemorrhage, definitely put it out if you're suspecting a major hemorrhage. I mean, when I do sys with medical students here, we always say, well, if you're suspecting a major hemorrhage protocol it's always safest to put out the major hemorrhage protocol and the blood can always go back within 30 minutes if it's not being used. The worst thing is to have a major hemorrhage and not have any blood there. And again, just think about it in terms of assessment, assessment and interventions c is often the point at which you'll get, you often get to see and find that you have by this point, something to rectify. But the key thing to remember in any acute scenario is you've always got to come back and finish your at assessment. Ok. So you may get way late but do try and get back on track and say, well, I do need to get back on to assess disability, looking at Pupi reflexes, blood glucose measurements, et cetera. Uh An exposure exposure is really important. Um Exposure is where all the things that normally get missed need to be considered. Um you know, blood under the blankets, rashes on the legs that you didn't see before that actually suggest a diagnosis of septic meningitis. So just be aware of all these things and then you get to the end of your A two assessment. And what are you going to do now? So you've got to alert your senior. Ok. That's, that's number one. Ok. Why do you need to alert your senior? Well, that's what a safe F I one does. Ok. Safe fy one doesn't try to manage everything on their own and even if they can manage things on their own, it's still important that a senior then knows what's happened. OK. Think about an SAR handover, ok. They might get you to do that. It might take a, that, that, that might take a little while, but they might ask you to hand over. Ok. Have a good structure. OK. Uh And think about what the further management of, of this patient is beyond stabilizing the a assessment. If they've got um A CS, you know, what is the further management A s you know, you think about mona, think about uh PCI. Um And I always say with the SAR handovers always have a clear question. The end, often people get in there and say, hey, this is a so and so gentleman who's coming in with this, the background is that this is their assessment and then they, they sort of splat out the end and, and the person, the other end of the phone goes. OK. So what, you know, that's the key question is, so what, so what do you want? Do you want a recommendation? Do you want someone to come and see the patient? Do you want them to tell you what to do? Do you want to confirm your management plan with them? Have a clear question at the end. It's so important and it's a really important communication thing that some people even say some people even suggest an R SB, a structure to your hand over in a sense, a recommendation. And then SAR, so, you know, you pick up the phone and you say hi. My name is Dan. I'm an F one, I've got a patient here that I really want you to come and see straight away because I think they're really unwell and then go into situation because that way that person is already listening. Now on the other end of the phone, you imagine a medical registrar gets probably a call every 15 minutes, if not even more when they're on take. And you imagine number of calls they have to sift through all that information. But if you get straight to the point and say, look, this patient is really unwell. I need you to come and see them now that will be their attention. Ok? And then the other thing is think about other CASS called. So, you know, you may have a senior, you may have a line of escalation. If you're a medical F one, it would be a medical registry if you're a surgical F one surgical Inr. But if you've got a medical patient who's got an upper G I bleed, who else needs to be called? Ok. Probably the gastroenterology registrar needs to be aware of them. If you've got a patient, a surgical patient who's having a stemi who needs to be called probably the cardiovascular registrar. So don't just think about your own seniors think about who else needs to be called, um, anesthetics. ICU critical care outreach are always good bets as well to think about. If you're unsure, this demonstrates that you're a safe fy one. Ok. And then once you've done that, if you have time, you probably won't at this point because, um, you will have really a lot of information across to your, um, uh, your panel. Um, you can think about your history and I always use the ample um framework for this thing about allergies, medications, um past history, last meal events leading up to illness. So again, all of this is about structure. Um There are two ways of kind of going about a clinical interview. Um Some interviewers typically or historically, it used to be in a case in London, they would give you a case and they would just let you talk through it for 10 minutes. Um And some places historically used to be known in place of Oxford and Cambridge and they would pick you up on things and say, oh, why would you do that? Or, or have you not considered this alternative or they might ask you to explain something or justify yourself, be prepared for both, be prepared for both eventualities. My experience in Oxford was quite surprising. I was expecting to have the latter, but in fact, they did just let me talk for 10 minutes or five minutes for two cases uninterrupted. So be aware that both cases may be present, what could come up, so many things could come up. Ok. Here is, but a, a small list of potential things, the best place to look I would recommend is in the back of the cheese and onion, the Oxford um guide to clinical medicine and surgery. Um They have a great list of emergencies at the back and I just use that um to make a list of emergencies. And then I got a where document and I just put all the key findings, all the management plans for all of those um emergency scenarios on there. Ok. So let's talk about the academic interview. Ok. So we talked about the clinical aspect, OK. The clinical aspect is the bit that will be useful for your finals and it's probably the bit that you are best at already right now because it's what you've been revising for the last five years. Ok. This is the academic part of the interview, perhaps slightly less familiar. Um Generally I break this down to four types of questions because the general academic education leadership knowledge questions, ok. And that may change depending on what kind of SFP you're applying for critical appraisal of an academic work, personal questions. Um And then finally your off the wall questions, um perhaps the most difficult to prepare for. Let's just briefly go over general academic knowledge. So this, unfortunately, these are the easy marks, ok? And this is the kind of stuff they expect you to, to get right. Um um So, you know, think broadly, OK. Um and think conceptually as well. Um Yes, it's good to know about P values. But what is a P value? They might ask you what actually is a P value? What is a H index? We use these things all the time. Don't think about what they are. Um You know, what is a type one or type I errors know about power calculations, um know about the different types of bias and that knowing about types of bias will help you with your critical appraisal structure, which we'll talk about in a second about study designs. So the first question in my academic interview was what is the difference between data collected from a randomized control trial versus the data collected in an observational cross sectional study? OK. So what are they actually asking me? They are actually asking me what's the difference between a randomized control trial and a cross sectional study? OK. So know your study designs, know what their implications are for the data that they produce the reliability, the accuracy. So this is the general academic knowledge stuff. This is the stuff you can go and revise. OK. Um So I won't see too much more on that critical appraisal. OK. So this can be a bit difficult. Um If they ask you an interview, tell us about a paper you've read recently, what they actually asking you actually asking you to demonstrate some ability to critically raise paper. I don't really think they want you to just say, oh, yeah, I read this last week. It was cool. They're looking for you to actually demonstrate some critical judgment of the paper. And realistically if you don't have an answer to this question, if you, if you're interviewing for an academic posts and they say, tell us about a paper you read recently and you go uh I think that's going to be probably an automatic rejection really, isn't it? You should have an answer to this question because you are trying to convince them that you are an academic or you have potential to be an academic. If you're not reading papers, it doesn't look good. So for this kind of thing, it might, it might be structured, there might be a preselected abstract of paper such as is the case with London or it may, it may come up organically in the interview and they may expect you to have one prepared. I definitely prepared my own my recommendation and it's up to you whether you choose to go with this. My recommendation would be to prepare three. So I prepared one in my field of expertise as in the research that I was doing my BSC, one in my field of expertise, one in my general field of medicine, but not within my expertise and one completely outside my field of medicine. And that means that you could start off with your, if they ask you the question, you obviously start with a paper, you know, best and they say no, tell us, tell us about another paper, then you could fall back on your second choice, which would be something that's still within your field. But maybe, you know, a bit less about. And then if they, you know, specifically ask you about a paper that's not related to your research, you still have something in the bag ready to prepare what they're looking for is a thorough and structured analysis. And probably at the end, they'll want you to come to some kind of judgment on what it means with clinical practice in that area of interest. And we'll talk a bit about, you know, what the do s and don's of that in a second. OK. Um Here's, here's an example I am again, this is from the London SFP handbook and it's the only handbook that seems to provide examples of these kinds of things. But you know, this would be a great abstract to practice on. Um if you're thinking of applying for any A FP, really, I think you should, you should have some critical appraise already. Um And you know, the abstract itself is not much to read and because all the information is there, you kind of know that you can just, you know, you've got, you've got everything there to comment on, just read through it and just think, right, how does this factor into my critical appraisal and then put it into a good structure? OK. So this is the structure that I use. OK. So start off with the specifics of the study. OK. Pi hopefully you've all heard of PICO, this is a slight variation PICO K um which just includes the key findings at the end. OK. This is really important. I just start off with this very basic um summary of what the study actually is. OK. This demonstrates that you know initially what you're dealing with. OK. Let me talk about internal validity. OK. So internal validity relates to bias, confounding and chance, which are the three generally the three key sources of potential problems with internal validity, the study's ability to be valid within itself. OK. And those can come from things like study design the population, you know, how are they recruited? Where are they recruited from? Think about things like selection bias, the intervention, blinding outcome measures where they selected a priori are they appropriate outcome measures? Statistics? Think about then your external validity. This is whether or not the results or the paper itself can be applied reasonably to the general population it's intended for. OK. Is an important question. If it's not an important question, it's a bit pointless doing the research in the first place. Yeah. Analysis intention to treat versus per protocol probably worth finding out if you say intention to treat means that you, everyone who starts the study is included in the data analysis, regardless of whether or not they finish per protocol means you only include the patients who complete the protocol of the study. There are pros and cons to both per protocol. For example, probably gives you a better, more realistic idea of what the intervention actually has or does affect wise on your population. The intention to treat is probably more realistic um when applying the study to general practice, because not everyone is adherent to their medication, not everyone is compliant. So think about that. Um and then for any ethical implications, there usually is always some kind of ethical implication to any study. But do you have to think about what's specific to your study that you've chosen? And in conclusion and what they really want to know is what is the utility to study to practice? And I suppose the the wrong answer probably not. I say the wrong answer. Ok. But an answer that probably isn't going to get many marks is an answer in which you say, yeah, I'm going to change my practice based on the results of this study because the truth is that research is an ever evolving, ever evolving beast. OK? You don't just get data from one study and suddenly decide that everything is going to change. You look at multiple studies. If there are sources of bias or confounding, then the results of the study might not be reliable, it might not be accurate. So you ideally want to get a meta analysis, a systematic review, all the literature on this particular field, bring all the results together and then come to a decision about guidelines based on all the data available. OK. How I that's how I structure critical appraisal, right? Um And you know, that could take, you know, you could take, you could spend 5, 10 minutes talking through that alone. Um which is the case, I think for the London interview, um they may want some discussion after that as well. So let's talk a bit about personal questions. OK. So this is kind of link you back to your wide space stuff. OK. What do you want to show here? You want to show here, not necessarily that you're a finished product as Harry has already alluded to, but that you have potential. OK? You also want to demonstrate, I think in these kinds of questions that you're someone who has an idea of the sort of day to day things that are that comprise research. OK. Um You know, knowing about those small minutiae, you know, if you're doing a systematic review, knowing that it's worth registering it on a platform called Prosper. So that other pros is a platform that allows everyone to register currently ongoing systematic reviews so that if you start a systematic review on a topic, someone else elsewhere in the world who has no knowledge of your group doesn't start doing a systematic review on the same thing because that would be a waste of time, two people doing the same systematic review. Um So, you know, try and try and demonstrate that you've got that day to day knowledge and structure your answers. So prepare answers to the classic interview questions. You know, why do you want to do an A SFP what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Those could all come up and again, because they're so because they're such classic questions, um the expectation of you having an answer for them will be greater. And if you don't have an answer, it will look pretty, pretty rubbish. I always think about having three reasons for anything. OK? If they ask you a why question, why do you want to do this have three reasons? At least often, often you might have more and then be an in inside post within your answer. OK. So for example, if, if they asked, you know, why do you want to do an A SFP in, in Sheffield, you might say, well, the reasons for you wanted to come to Sheffield are academic logistical and personal, academically. Sheffield has a world class center in specialty. Logistically, Sheffield's hospitals are close together. The academic center is within reasonable commuting distance to the clinical unit or the district General Hospital on which I would be placed for my clinical rotations. And personally, you know, I have family or friends living in Sheffield. I've lived in Sheffield before. It's a fantastic city. I really want to be there, whatever, you know. So, just kind of sign posts and then have a couple of different reasons, make it personal. Everyone's going to say the same. You know, there are some cliches, you know, the cliches about Oxford and Cambridge are, oh, I really want to come to Oxford because the collegiate teaching system means that I'll get to teach medical students. Yeah, everyone says that. So, you know, you might as well just not say it. Um So think about unique things, research where you want to go research, the kind of academia you want to do. One of the key reasons for, for academics wanting to work anywhere is often the field that they are working in. You know, there might be a big name or a big lab and with labs, think about track records in terms of grant funding, numbers of DFI students and fellows around that might help to teach you to help you learn. Um you know, joining a lab with one professor and one clinical lecturer. Um They're probably not going to have an awful lot of time to you. Actually having younger academics on the team is really, really great because they'll have the time to teach you and they're slightly closer in time to your own level of training. So they'll understand what it's like to be a junior academic So those are all things to think about. And then finally, we get to off the wall questions. OK. So these are, are typical of Oxford and Cambridge and more so than other deaneries, not to say that other dearies couldn't present these kinds of questions. OK. These are the most difficult to prepare for. These are questions that often are designed to examine your way of thinking about things, your way of approaching a problem or a question. Here's an example. So this is, this is in fact one of the academic questions I had in my Oxford interview and the question was you are the Prime Minister, what are your priorities for research during the COVID-19 pandemic? So you have a think about how you might have a think now how you might answer that question. It would be good exercise. I think one of the think think first of all, back to the first thing that I said, which was, you know, what do you want to demonstrate? You want to demonstrate someone got academic potential and you want to demonstrate as someone who is in touch with the day to day requirements of their junior academic role. OK. Um And then think about how you can apply that to this question. What a lot of people might say is a lot of people might say, oh yeah, priorities will be in researching uh virus genome sequencing, making sure that we sequence the genome of the virus and then share information and then we need to put loads of money into vaccine studies. We need to put loads of money into new drugs for fighting the COVID virus. Number one, that's what everyone will say. So, you know, you don't stand out at all if you say that. But number two, you know, yes, those things are important but guess what else is also important non COVID research? Um So, you know, the way I approached the question and I presume it was well received because I did get an SFP was I talked about, you know, ways in which funding could help non COVID research continue during the COVID pandemic, social distancing. That's a big problem for research. So can you organize programs or platforms that allow patients to attend screening um appointments or follow up appointments remotely from home without having to come into a clinical trials unit? Can you arrange for delivery of interventions, trial drugs and things to patients couriers services to make sure that patients can continue participating in trials even though they are not able to come in face to face to a trials unit? Thinking about dissemination of that information as well for ages journals were only focusing on COVID related research. So having quotas for journals to ensure that non COVID research is still being accepted, having more lenient deadlines for submission of that are non COVID research, having funding pots dedicated to non COVID research. So I just think about, think about, I think outside the box, think about what will everyone say and then try and think, you know, what are other interesting perspectives that I also need to consider? Here, here's another one. How can I get more patients involved in research? A lot of people will just talk about, you know, how do we approach patients? Where do we recruit them from consent? But actually, that's not what this question is asking. This question is asking about not just patients being the test subjects in research, but being involved in every stage of research. And that can be designing the study that can be having focus groups to actually ascertain whether the study is important is important. The outcome measures are important. A lot of, I think 80% of studies certainly at one point were based on new drugs or new therapeutics. But that is not actually necessarily what most patients want research to be about. Look at outcome measures, take a study about diabetes, look at diabetes, study outcome measures. Usually it HBA one C or fasting blood glucose. Ok. Do you think that matters to a diabetic patient? Of course, not a diabetic patient cares about outcomes that are related to their peripheral neuropathy or their diabetic retinopathy. They want their sight to not deteriorate any further. They don't want to have chronic neuropathic pain in their feet. The HBA one C they don't care about that. So again, try and think out of the box with these kinds of questions, I would have a think about current events, current advances in medicine, current, um I would say current news in medicine. Um they may well ask about, they could ask about that's a bit, that's a bit more clinical. So I wouldn't necessarily expect them to ask about that. But um think about what's relevant and what's recent and try and think of what questions they could ask and, and then have a go at answering them. Ok. So thank you for coming. Please do scan this QR code and fill in the feedback form. I'm I'm sorry, I'm just gonna double check that. It's the right QR code because I'm not sure if it is you. Um it looks semi right? The other thing to point out we can do a Q and A now. So, um Cami, are you around? Yeah, I'm around. Wonderful. I cannot see you, but obviously I don't know if you have a camera available or not. So I leave it to you. I do. That's fine. No worries. So basically, so Cami, rather than being an ethereal voice is another sf doctor. She's an F two. She's based in Southampton and she, she's interested in colorectal surgery. So there you go. There's an introduction, I suppose. But really guys, if you've got any questions, you're welcome to unmute, but you're welcome to ask in the chat. There's three of us here, we will try and answer and give every perspective we can to try and make it a bit easier for you. Go ahead. Really? Oh But to be fair whilst that's coming through with Dan. One thing I was thinking about that, I would just add on to what you said is that socially when people interview, it's almost really awkward to know when to interrupt someone when you're interviewing them so often. What's quite helpful is making it obvious to your interviewer that you are done that which is why signposting is helpful. But also just almost that nod that affirmation of like and that's that like a way of being like, yes, I'm done now because it saves them interrupting you and you going over time. Some people are very happy to interrupt others will let you whittle down your time. So just make it obvious to them. I can't emphasize that enough. Yeah. No, I completely agree. Completely agree. The other, the other thing I remember is one thing I think that made me look semi good in the interview for Oxford. There was a patient who wasn't very unwell. They had like mild hypoglycemia and they could have an oral replacement. So I was like, OK, and I remember something, Neve Martin said she was like, get an orange juice carton from the ward, one of those cartons and give that to the patient then repeat. And so I quoted that was verbatim and it was slightly calm Yeah, this isn't a life threatening emergency at this moment in time. We need to attempt this and then carry on. It's also important to the patient is completely. Well, saying that you will escalate to every person left, right in center call the crash team, et cetera doesn't look good either. So do make sure your escalation is appropriate. And if you can manage it locally and they say, oh, it comes up after some orange juice, their BM is now six. You might, you will put a ward entry, you probably don't need to. If it's three in the morning, you probably don't need to call the reg overnight to say that if you see what I mean. So there are do bear that kind of thing in mind as well. We've got a question here on the chat. Sorry Ary just to interrupt. Yeah. Um So, um for the leadership SFP, um do they still ask research based questions in the interview? Eg for example, for example, critical appraisal cami, I don't know what, what was your experience with this kind of thing? Um I did the research so I can hazard a guess from Manchester. So what they tended to do is give quite vague questions that would like tell us something almost like a thing that you're interested in and it can be a paper you read. Have you read any leadership papers or which is very academic focused? But they would always let you invite you about the topic or thing that was important to you and then go from there. So I think because London is very the classic that does this kind of crit appraisal. It's probably just the academic interviews, but you really should just need to do some research and check more than anything because I haven't sat a specific leadership interview. If that makes sense, I can't guarantee, but I hope not. You can Definitely, these interviews tend to be similar ish year to year in terms of structure. So finding someone who say you can find it on linkedin, if you don't know anyone in the year above who got that SFP find someone from a few years above or anyone really, they might be willing to talk to you actually linkedin be quite good for that kind of thing. Do you mind if I ask you a question about the interview, what was your experience? And that will hopefully give you some insight that we can't offer because we are just I just three people, but we have an idea. Um The other thing I don't answer to that is that, you know, although it might be an education or a leadership SFP that you are applying for, but doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, education um is not necessarily just about, you know, going and teaching medical students for an hour every, every day, for a week, but it can be about educational theory and that kind of stuff, you know, that kind of stuff is published, that kind of stuff is peer reviewed and you may be confronted with an abstract pertaining to an educational piece of literature. And they may ask you to critically appraise that critical appraisal isn't unique to academic research. Critical appraisal is unique to all kinds of not just academia but all facets of medicine. You know, as a doctor, you practice critical appraisal on a daily basis. It's just not necessarily critical appraisal of an academic journal paper, but you know, critical appraisal of a patient or critical appraisal of a pathway or of action or a procedure that you're doing. So I would say, you know, just because you're doing an educational leadership sp you may still be asked to do critical appraisal, but I would expect it to be related to educational leadership to that end. There are there are specific journals that appease to certain markets. So if you're looking for leadership stuff and you're looking can get critical appraisal or just idea of hot topics and leadership BMJ leader does some articles which can be helpful to look at. They are often quite UK centric and in terms of big medical education journals, there are a few but academic medicine, medical education, clinical teacher are all quite big journals that you could look at. So it is worth having a read around a better idea of the current issues of the day in those subjects. And it doesn't hurt to say that you have an academic interest in educational leadership. It also makes it a bit easier, I suppose doubling up uh other questions maybe whilst we wait um in case anybody else has any other questions she wanted to say, thanks very much. Um Harry and Dan for giving to really useful and quite insightful lectures. Really appreciate you guys taking the time out to give those talks. And thanks also Camila for joining guys, if you could also fill out the feedback form. Um Once we have enough feedback, we can also upload the lecture recordings and slides for you guys to watch as well. Glad you enjoyed it. And I hope it was useful. But yeah, I'm still happy to sit here for a few more minutes. So do if you've got anything to ask do and the other thing to point out are like downside in terms of interview prep, like you're not in real terms, you're not. No job is that competitive? You're actively competing against just your friends. So, you know, leaning on them, your support mechanisms is very important. I wouldn't, don't get sharky about any of this. It's important to if you, if you're comfortable doing that kind of thing, practicing friends is always a good idea. Cami Did you have any other random unsolicited advice to offer for these people? Um I guess I'm not sure if Dan may have mentioned it in the interview of section. But, uh, one of the questions I guess that stuck out to me in my interview was, uh, they asked specifically why that Deanie and I mentioned one of the, uh, senior lecturers that was, um, special in pelvic floor surgery there and we talked a bit about them and their most recent papers and that sort of stuff. So luckily it was something that I'd, you know, done a lot of research in and, um, you know, was obviously generally interested in but, you know, don't mention things that you're not prepared to. So lots of follow up things and, you know, if you have a specific reason, I think that was one of the things that, you know, I did well on in my interviews was, you know, I, I knew why I wanted to be there with that department, with that team because often, um, the hospitals and universities you'll be joined to, will have particular specialties. So they want you to be wanting them specifically, not just the SFP in general. Um, yeah, so that's some advice I give. Yeah, that's a real, real good point. It sort of like almost like bread crumb dropping. I think it's, this is obviously it's a really stressful experience. But if you are able to sometimes little throw away comments that they might pick up and really roll with sometimes very good and they're quite good at getting a conversation out of it, which is what I think. They really appreciate when they get really bored half the time when you're interviewing. Yeah, because they, they, you know, you don't know when in the day you'll be, they've done lots of these interviews but they are, they all know each other once. So if you mention someone who else in their department, they will know them. They're probably good friends with them. They, they will know about their research and they want to talk about that sort of thing. These, the academic people interviewing you usually that they, they love research, they love the fields they're in. So they want to talk about that more than that they want to, you know, talk about some of the other things that they, you know, have to bring up during the so, and those things stick out to them and that's what they remember. And they're like, oh, I want to work with this person. They showed enthusiasm in my field. They're actually going to be committed. They will, they're going to be a great addition to the team. We've got some projects in that area that we want to work, we want to work towards. They might be the perfect person to help with that. All that, all those sorts of things are things that might make you stand out. And I think the other thing was if they in your white space questions and other, I'm sure Harry's mentioned it, but the things that make you stand out are more interesting and things you might not think of like. So I mentioned my work on the su and my work with some of my societies are big organizational roles that were probably won't be as common to some of the other people applying. If you have any of those, they are a bit more out of the pocket experiences that really show your leadership qualities or your ability to handle multiple projects or complex teamwork, things like that. Those are all really good and, and will, you know, set you apart from others. So things that make you stand out, think about what those things are and you know, use them and, and don't be afraid whatever you put in your white space questions don't expect the interviewers to have read them and uh make sure you say them. Don't, you know, if you've won a prize in XYZ, don't feel just because you've mentioned it in White Space answers that you can't mention it again at interview because that's absolutely not the case. Yeah. They often probably haven't read them, they might have it there in front of them. Um But not necessarily. So um at all, mm when they're interviewing, they often if it's 20 minutes slot, that's three an hour and these interviews happen all day. So they're probably gonna end up interviewing, you know, 24 27 people over the course of a day. That's a lot of White Space questions to read Yeah, exactly. They've only got so much time and they are probably not paid, they are not paid for this pleasure. You got to remember that they are just sort of sucked into it. Yeah. Um, also just thing to add that I'm, uh, about the Southampton, uh, the Wessex process. I'm pretty sure that for our clinical interview it wasn't scored. I'm pretty sure it was a pass fail sort of situation. So they wanted to essentially make sure that you are safe because, you know, you've got less clinical time. But our actual answers when we compared our Yeah. And then the year below also compared and they'd all answered slightly differently. They just wanted to make sure that you're safe and you've got good, you know, how to react appropriately essentially. Yeah. So don't get too as in like don't put all your pressure, you know, if you think you, oh I missed out that tiny, like little bit of management. I just say the exact dose of enoxaparin to give to the pe patient, you know, calm down. It's, it's fine, you know, you're not gonna lose your SFP uh place because of that, you know, and just thinking about in terms of the, the non clinical part of the interview, I know in terms of academic research, we talk a lot about quantitative research. But there is this whole other branch of mystery called qualitative research, which is not the expertise of medics. I'll fully point that out. But it's the kind of thing that comes up a lot in leadership and education because doing a double blind randomized trial doesn't exist easily in medical education. So knowing a bit about qualitative search can be helpful. So like types of qualitative research, thematic analysis, grounded theory. How do you collect qualitative research? You can do focus groups interviews, you can do questionnaires which everyone loves and they're all terrible. Knowing a bit about that is also quite helpful because if that's the kind of guys you want to go down and they ask you academic style questions for an education and you're an educationist or a leadership prone person. That's the kind of thing you can look at similarly, I suppose quality improvement might be a better thing to align with in management and leadership. So there are lots of quality improvement journals that publish good qi understanding that process and interested in that is probably going to make things easier for you from the academic plus other type perspective. Um Also just another thing like a housekeeping thing to add. Um Make sure you have, I'm sure I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned it. Make sure you have good wifi connection practice beforehand. Don't trust the Reynaud Wifi. It's bad. My interview cut out the wifi cut out in both of my interviews and I had to reschedule one. So do not, do not do, do not trust the Reynolds practice in your home. Find somewhere appropriate where you could, you know, if you have to tell your housemates the kitchen is unavailable for this period. Um, do that because you know, it will, it can set you off and like put you in a bad mind space. So trying to control the other environmental factors to make them as least as least stressful as possible is really important. That's absolutely true. Actually, I haven't considered that a really good point. And similarly, like if you have loads of people on one Wi Fi network, if you know at bottlenecks, every time someone, three people load Netflix maybe, maybe ask them. Could you look for this half an hour? Can you just airplane mode or something or just stay at Reynolds and Google there, please? And hopefully all your housemates will understand that this is an interview you do need, they want and they need to be quiet and they need to give you a safe space to use. I use my front living room and have an ironing board as the thing that raised up the table because my coffee table was too short. So think about stuff like that. Practically the other thing in terms of do da mentioned prepping early in terms of interview, I don't totally disagree because I think it is important. The only thing I would mention is, and this is coming back to ego is if you are going to get really upset, if you don't get interviewed some interview prep can almost feel like a waste of time. And I think I have a friend who felt like that and that made it a bit worse. I think that's what kind of person you are and how much time you need to prep. So just think about yourself and what will make you feel better just by the way, practice is never bad to be clear, but maybe for you individually, I don't know. Um, any other questions, um, this might be, uh, just something for if those of you that do get an, an SFP, um, when you, yeah, for when it actually comes around, I'm doing mine at the moment. Uh, make sure you locum because you probably won't be able to afford your lifestyle living unless you do, uh, like locum on top of it. Um, it's a really good time to do other stuff and to just, you know, live a life but, um, be prepared for the financial hit. Uh, especially if you change houses and your rent goes up and you have higher than council tax to pay. These are things to bear in mind, especially if you might still be striking this. Well, you know, hopefully not, hopefully not, but these are practicalities to just bear in mind, I guess. And also find out if you can strike because, um, I'm pretty sure you can most because you're still paid by the trust. But for example, academic contracts, if you're paid by a college like Imperial, for example, you technically can't strike because you're not employed by the NHS. I'm pretty sure that won't change for you. But you wouldn't want to find out the hard way. But, you know, a lot of clinicians would still say don't come in and also then with locums for, for me, I mean, I think it's the same for everyone but you can't locum within your, like 9 to 5. Um because that's technically working double. I think if you have written permission from your supervisor that you have flexible working hours, that's fine. But I know that I can't, I have to do that side of that and there have been people who have been taken to the GMC and got in very serious trouble for like not having that permission and stuff like that. So don't do that. Yeah, that's very fair. Um ok. Any more questions? I, I think that's it. Um Yeah, guys very much. Um I, you put your contact there if anybody has any questions that they think about, uh later on or you can send them to us and we can forward them. Um, but thanks very much once again guys for taking the time out. Cool. Ok, well, take care. Have a nice night. See you enjoy your evening. Thank you. Bye. Yeah, best of luck. Thank you. Bye bye.