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We are now alive. Ok. Can anyone hear me, John? Can you hear me? I can hear you. Yes. OK. So I think if you can hear me, then everyone can hear me right. So good morning, everyone. Welcome to the preparing for course surgical training day. I'm Michael. I'm the Director of Education for Asset. And um I would like to thank you all for being here today. We are very excited to gather all aspiring surgeons in such an event. And as I mentioned yesterday, in the preparing for a career in surgery, day, surgery is more than a profession and it needs um commitment to lifelong learning and that's why we are all here at the weekend. So um I hope it would be a productive day for everyone. And uh before we start, I'd like to thank all the faculty who dedicated their time and the weekend to come and teach and support um aspiring surgeons. So I think let's dive in. Um our first speaker is Jono. Jono is the um course surgical training rep for acid and he worked very hard to organize this event. So morning, Jono, how are you? Morning? Not too bad, ready for day. Number two. All right. Yeah, good luck. Ok, so you start Jono. The stage is all yours? Perfect. Thank you. So, yeah, just to remind you guys, uh I'll be starting off talking about the recruitment process and changes. We'll then have some talks about planning your fy three. I'll then cover the M sra pretty much just an overview of what its contents. We'll take a short break before going onto the actual meat of the portfolio section, how to build a standout portfolio and going from each of the three interview topics, how to frame your questions and then apply that. Um Going forwards, got some breakout sessions. If there are any available breakout sessions, we will advertise them in the chat. So keep your eyes peeled just in case there's any last minute openings. Ok, great. So I'm gonna start off talking about the recruitment changes and I'll just start showing my slides, apologies to you all as well. I've got quite a bit of a nasty cough. Um I try not to break your ears too much. So CST recruitment process and changes for this year. Um I'm Jono, I'm Act two in orthopedics. Uh I'm also the asset CT representative and I'm also the committee member for the CST advisory committee, which means I have a bit of an input into the runnings of the portfolio and the interview. Just a quick disclaimer that this presentation is essentially based on publicly available information. You can get all the information from the N HSE website, particularly on core surgical training. I'm just here to provide some general guidance and information for you guys and I'm not affiliated with, endorsed by all kind of representative of any official recruitment body from this presentation itself. Uh Please do refer to the public guidance, but if there are any particular questions, just post them in the chat and I'll get to it later. So the recruitment timeline applications for CST are already open and they will close at 4 p.m. sharp on the 21st of November, you'll then get an invite probably in December for the M SRA uh exam in January 2025. Particular dates of that are to be confirmed for those of you that are lucky. The top 1200 will be invited to an interview on the sixth of February the following day. The portfolio upload evidence portal will open and you have to upload all of your evidence. Within that time. There will not be any delays made for anyone. And unfortunately, extenuating circumstances won't, won't be um a reason for any delays or submission. Interviews will take place on the 24th of February until the seventh of March. And then it is estimated that at the end of March offers will be released during that period. Um prior to the offer release probably in uh March, uh you'll be ranking all of your jobs So how do you apply just for those of you that don't know or go over this quickly. Go on to the Aureol website, literally type into Google Aureol. Click the top uh one you then need to click on medical and public health specialties. Make sure you register before you log in. So register with your best email. Ideally, your NHS email. Once you've registered, log in on the left, you'll see vacancies looking for the jobs you'll type in into the search box core and then you'll click on core surgical training. There are two cool surgical training jobs that are there. Um This talk only covers those applying for the England, Scotland and Wales job. I'm not going to be talking about the Northern Ireland job. So make sure that you click on the correct job and press supply. There's lots of information you guys need to fill all of your personal information, your demographic information and your employment history. There's two further aspects. You need to complete the application form where you'll have to talk about references. So you'll need three references during the last two years of your employment or undergraduate training. One of them needs to be your most recent consultant or educational supervisor. The other two can be any consultant that you've worked well with a clinical supervisor or a previous educational supervisor. It's also really important that you put down the number of surgical experience months that you have now just to stress, this does not count for any of your foundation training, surgical experience. So, if you're in f, to apply and you've never worked in the, er, and you've never had any other occupation in surgery or surgical specialty, you would put zero for those of you who are F three, F four or anything. After foundation training, the number of months you've worked, you'll have to put down here, but please note you're also gonna have to put down the number of months that are from you. Uh The number of months you're working in surgery from the time you've finished F two to the time you start the CT one job. Unfortunately, if that number is 18, mo is over 18 months, you're not eligible to apply for course surgical training. So let's go through the score breakdown and the M sra this is how your score is broken down for core surgical training. This year, 10% of it will be the M sra 90% of it is the interview. The interview has three different sections, the portfolio, a leadership and management and a clinical station. 30% scored each, the leadership and management and clinical stations will pretty much be the same as previous years. The only difference to the interview this year is the portfolio, the M sra takes place in January. It's literally based on foundation level competence. That's the um clinical portion which is pretty much the same as your questions from finals, medical school as well as the S JT segment. Um I'll be delivering a whole talk on this a bit later. But this exam is used for shortlisting and it's the top 1200 people who are performing the M SRA that will be invited to interview. So let's go through the portfolio and the interview. The changes that have happened to this year's portfolio is that conferences from the first commitment to surgery uh Domain have been removed, teaching qualifications like APG cert have also been removed. They have added a requirement for Domain for teaching experience that you have also delivered at least four teaching sessions. If you want the top two points, they've also changed it. So it's not particularly a number score that you put on your or but rather a letter system from A to E for the following year for those not applying this year. But next year, the following two changes will be made. Itu will be removed from the list of surgical specialties in the logbook and foundation year surgical rotations will also be removed from the first domain. This means that for the first domain, um anyone who's done an F one or an F two in the A surgical rotation in it that will no longer count. The reason is this was introduced due to issues around COVID where people couldn't take taste weeks or electives. Now that we no longer have COVID around um touch wood um there's no way that this differentiates anyone from showing their commitment to surgery, especially since one of the requirements of foundation training is you have at least one rotation in a surgical specialty. So everyone will get the point. Now, the interview it's gonna be virtual. It takes place at the end of February to the beginning of March and it's about 30 minutes long. You have 3, 10 minute stations, portfolio leadership and management and clinical. Just some key things to know about your assessors. They're either a consultant or an ST six or more. They all undergo equality and diversity training. They're gonna be really bored. Honestly. It's, it's a long day. They've got loads of people to go through. I know professionalism means really they shouldn't be bored and they're there for a job. But I'm sure if you guys were sitting there listening to people say the same answers over and over again, they wanna give you points. Ok? The more you practice, the more you look slick, the more that way like, yeah, this guy ticks this, this person ticks all the boxes with regards to your evidence that you submit. They're gonna focus on that first piece of evidence. And what I mean by this, if you're submitting multiple pages of different types of evidence for when you're only needing to admit one piece of evidence, they're only gonna read that first piece, make their life easy. Honestly, if you, if you make their life easy for the portfolio. I'm sure they'll probably make your life easier. Portfolio station will feature questions on any two portfolio domains. So five minutes each, it's not specific where you'll just have whether you'll just have one question or multiple questions as part of that. But it is an opportunity for them to question you if they don't feel that you've claimed the correct number of points, whether you're deserving of more points or whether you're actually deserving of fewer points. So if you've over claimed on points, you will be asked about this and there is a risk that your professionalism will be called into question. Leadership and management will have talks on this later, especially how to phrase your answers. It starts with a three minute leadership presentation. You'll be given the title to present and there's no slides, you just talk into the camera, you'll then have two minutes of follow up questions for that. You'll have five minutes of a leadership and management style question. This could be ethics. This could be a weird conundrum. For example, you smell alcohol in your consultant's breath is about to operate. What do you do? Stuff like that? And then finally, you'll have two clinical scenarios lasting five minutes each from what I've heard, it's the same as previous years and we're here to test the knowledge, literally expect of a of a foundation trainee. We're not expecting you to be a registrar. Um And it focuses on clinical situations that you experience on wards or in A&E if you wanna take a quick screenshot, if you want to reflect on how things will go, this is pretty much um the structure that interviews will have, you'll be invited into a portfolio room where you'll have all of your ids checked. You'll have to show your entire room to make sure that your room has no one in there who can give you advice and guidance. Um And then you'll be having the interviewers check your portfolio for about 10 minutes in the background. You'll then be invited into a room for 10 minutes for the portfolio questions. You'll move on to another room for 10 minutes for the leadership and then onto the third room for clinical Cool. I'm just gonna call it quits here just to check if there's any questions on the platform. Um Eight questions. Ok. No, there are no questions which is, may I please be on there? Ok. So there's no questions. In that case, I'll just go on to the frequently asked questions. So we hosted three webinars as part of NHS England to address all the frequently answered, frequently asked questions that CSS had. These are the following. So can you reset the M sra um not for the same cycle? So if you do it in January, whatever score you get, then is the score that you have to unfortunately manage with until the following recruitment cycle So the next cycle you'll have to do the M SRA again if you get a great score, but you don't wanna do CST. Unfortunately, your M SRA score will not be carried over. You have to do it again. Will you be penalized if you reject act offer? No. And is the interview recorded? No. Do gynecology procedures count on my log book about C sections. No, gynecology is not considered a surgical specialty. All the surgical specialties are listed on the portfolio guidance. It's basically everything. Um that is a surgical specialty. As per the Royal College of Surgeons assessors will exclude these from your total case count. Maybe you're lucky and the assessor doesn't know this and they'll include it, but it's safer for you to just, you know, get all of those uh logbook numbers, not including the gynecology ones, even though they come under general surgery on the logbook. Does each procedure need to be individually validated on my log book? No, you just need to print off the consolidation sheet which I'll show you how to do later and get every single page signed. Does a taste a week or elective letter need to mention any of my surgical experience. Yes, that's new to this year. Um Your consultant or supervisor should detail what you actually did. What I would recommend is you just write the letter yourself, you write a reflection on yourself, you give it to your supervisor and you ask them to sign it. That's the most efficient way. Surgery is a very different specialty to medicine. Must both cycles of the audit have been presented. Yes, this is a, this is a clinical audit, a part of the process you have to present both. Now you spec particular, you specifically don't have to have presented them yourself. Your colleagues can have presented them, but that will just affect the score that you have for the presentation points if you qualify for them. And yes, post presentations are an acceptable form of presentation for this presentations and publications. Um Any publications are accepted provided, they have a PUBMED ID. If you've written a book chapter, then you need to provide the is BN number. If you think that you will be invited to a conference after the oral deadline closes er on the 21st, can you still claim points? No, because you've not been accepted if you have currently been accepted for a presentation that will take place before the evidence submission closes in February now. Yes, you can accept those points. However, and big, however, you must have all the evidence ready during the evidence portal submission. If you don't, then unfortunately, it will either score zero or there'll be a few more issues at interview and there won't be an extension unfortunately. So it's a bit of a risk, risky play. Finally. Um minimum number of teaching hours for the teaching course. There are no minimum number of hours, you just need a valid certificate, what constitutes acceptable evidence. Uh For student feedback, you can use forms, Google forms, an Excel sheet, but I'm gonna show you later during the portfolio clinic how I lay my out and that scored forms. So um I've taken screenshots literally of of what I submitted. So stick around and have a look. Does a teaching education letter need to be signed by a consultant or can any member of the university or medical education administrator sign it? No, this needs to be signed by someone who pretty much has a GMC number who can take responsibility any nonmedical staff, whether it's a university scientist, whether it's an administrator, they um do not count in this situation, they want a clinician. So I would strongly suggest the way around this is you find a consultant, perhaps your educational supervisor, you write an email for them two, whichever administrator signed you off originally for this teaching experience, just to confirm that all of that evidence is correct and then have that on a letter if you delivered a presentation and this is the final slide. If you've delivered a presentation in any other language, um does the entire presentation and program need to be officially transcribed. So this is a two part answer. Firstly, you yourself can self transcribe your presentation. However, any letters of evidence or accompanying programs will need to be transcribed by an official translator and you'll probably have to purchase that. So any questions about the changes to portfolio or recruitment? What about publications? If the paper got accepted in Jan, will it be accepted? Um It's a good question. Um However, if you don't have, you need to have had that, you have to have an acceptance letter before the oral deadline. So what I mean by this is at any point you're claiming for, you have to have confirmation that is definitely happening. If you've got a publication that's been accepted, then it's likely it's in press and there's evidence on the portfolio guidance that tells you how um how to submit that evidence. What is the dean of the university in terms of signing off for the teaching? Same, my, my same um answer response you'll have to speak with a, if they've got a GMC number, then great if they don't speak with your supervisor. Um and just get them to email them to, to confirm it's the safest thing for this year. Itu count as surgical specialty. Itu counts this year. Yes, it's from 2026 where it does not count. Um And I think going forwards, it will not count uh for teaching experience doesn't matter if it's a local teaching series or regional or national. Let me just get my slides up so I can tell you I will be covering the portfolio a bit later. So going on to section four. Um ok, the evidence says worked with local educators to design a face to face or online teaching program. So local is fine if you've completed your F I two, more than 3.5 years prior to the CST start date, I understand you have to upload a quest form, but it is still required. Should you submit your completion of foundation training certificate too? Uh That's a good question. I will copy that and just add it to my list of notes so that I can get back to you on that. Uh So I've done that one, done that one, done that one. What if the d done that one? Do you have any last minute conferences where you could submit abstracts to that in December, January? Thanks so much. Unfortunately, asset do not have any conferences in December or January. However, we are advertising um abstracts for our Marcher Assets conference. It's our 49th conference, but I'll talk about that a bit later. I've already answered the question on publications. Part of the oral application asks if we have a national training number or de a reference number. If you are F twos, will we have one of these? Uh I will have a look. I didn't see that on the application as if we have a initial training or a reference number. I don't think you guys do, but I'll get back to you to on that. Oh, that's tim. The other one was Catana. Does it count as a surgical experience? In the 18 months. I would, I would keep it as um a surgical specialty for this rotation. Yes, Hanna Bar. Sorry to go back. But regarding the port fail stuff, do we have to submit the index page? So the index page submission is in February. It's not as part of your oral application uh for November. Hi. Can I please uh does an fy three job in surgery count as a surgical placement? It's a very good question. Um I would argue yes. Um There's nothing on the portfolio that says it isn't. Have you done one as part of your foundation training would be my question back. Um So long as you've had the minimum number of months working in a surgical rotation and you can specify that on your letter and that should be acceptable. Uh taste a week. Is it still first evidence if I have two separate letters from two different consults? My taste a week was with two different consultants, pediatric and adult? I would, if, if that's the case, I would just mention um, at the time, I don't know, you've still got time to modify them so you could amalgamate them both. I'll show you later how you can, how you can lay it out. But I would suggest that you put a little note on like a head of paper just to say that this many weeks were done on this taste a week and this many weeks were done with this taste a week, but I'll talk all about that in the portfolio session later.