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OK. Hello everyone. Good afternoon. Welcome to our uh webinar on working your way to radio as an international medical graduate. Uh I can see a la lot of you have joined so far, we're just going to wait for another five minutes so that uh we could uh have everyone join, then we can start our pre our presentation. We've had a question if this will be recorded, I believe it is recorded, isn't it? Hello all. Uh Thank you for joining us. Uh in the session. We'll start our session now. Uh I hope I'm audible and uh visible to everyone you can come into. Yes, if uh yeah. Amazing. Thank you. So we are gonna start our session on working your way to radiology as an international medical graduate. The session is hosted by Ir Juniors and uh uh cohosted by RCR Rare. So a little bit about me, I'm, I'm uh an incoming SD one in Vess Jan. This year I graduated from Dubai in 2019. I had done my Mr CPC H as an intern because I was initially interested in pediatrics. And then I did my labs COVID hit 2019 to 2021. I was in um I was working in Dubai in 2021. I was fortunate enough to secure a clinical attachment with Ash and ST Peters. And then from there on, I started as a trust grade sho and a rotational post. Uh and I am still in the same post. Uh The interesting part of my experience as a trust grade as IO is that I did manage to secure a rotational post in clinical radiology, which was an eye opener. And which is when I realized I was really interested in radiology. Going ahead, I did a taste a week in Peninsula Academy to see how the difference has been being in an academic setting and uh um uh uh radiology, uh radio clinical radiology setting as well. And uh I was very, very passionate about widening participation, equality, diversity and inclusivity, which uh led me uh to represent trust grade, junior doctors as a representative within my trust. And then paid my way into RCR re steering group and also as Irsa widening participation, equality and diversity inclusivity lead. I uh other than that academically, I graduated with 16 distinctions from med school. Currently, I'm pursuing my master's in uh artificial intelligence and PG cert in medical education. So the list of contents for today, we're gonna go through an introduction, then our competition ratio application timeline, then how do we track the portfolio after that? Uh Bal would be speaking about. So you want to be a radiologist a day in the life of radiologist M sra preparation, interview preparation and then we'd have AQ and A towards the end of the session. So uh beginning with introduction, recruitment for radiology basically occurs via oral. The season for a applying is usually October to November. And uh November 23rd was the deadline last year for application uh who can apply uh people doing their foundation year two could apply uh trust free as a such as myself who have their valid crest form signed or as a chose could also apply. And other specialty trainees could also apply for uh radiology. And the most daunting thing about a radiology application was the competition ratio. So when I had uh uh joined my um trust as uh a trust and I was interested in ra radiology. The first thing I looked up was the competition ratio and that particular year 2023 competition ratio was 9 to 1, which is that every nine for every nine applications that's been put through one candidate gets selected. Uh And our year 2024 the competition ratio was somewhere around 1111 to 1 and this has not been released yet. But uh yeah, this uh this was the competition ratio is taken from radiology cafe. And uh one of the uh one of the trends that we had noticed is that from 2012 to now, the competition ratio has been steadily uh increasing and radiology is a very competitive branch to apply to. And here's the application timeline. So usually the Academy Clinical Fellow application timeline occurs a bit earlier a month earlier than the standard ST one application. The advert opens somewhere around 25th October and then 23rd November, the application closes. We all get our invites at 19th at around December and then MSA occurs somewhere around January and we'd be having our results around February and evidence verification upload occurs during February. Our interviews occurred somewhere around March and we had our initial offers released at 26th, March 2024. The challenge ahead. The first thing when anyone starts to apply for radiology is the portfolio. The portfolio is demanding, the portfolio has a lot of components. So this is how I started when I wanted to apply. I went through the portfolio requirements. And once I went through the portfolio requirements, I was feeling very, very overwhelmed. I did not know how to sort this out clearly. And how do I get? How do I maximize my points in each domain? What I essentially did was I sought guidance from my uh I sought guidance from my mentors uh which I had gone through for a mentorship um program conducted by ACR Rare where I was provided with a mentor. Fortunately, but otherwise I had also approached uh the registrars in my uh in our local radiology department to see how I could uh maximize my uh points and portfolio. And one of the things I learned as strategies to crack the portfolio was to break down the complexities to split the portfolio into achievable targets and identify and setting realistic goals. Uh as we go through the portfolio, uh you might be able to see what I mean. So the first section of the portfolio, the basically this is the portfolio, it has 45 points. The first section of the portfolio is commitment to speciality. And uh when uh asked for commitment to specialty, the portfolio says multiple significant exposure to radiology, how I had attained multiple significant exposure to radiology is I did a taste a week in uh Peninsula Academy. I also had a clinical rotation in radiology. And uh more often than not having two taste a weeks would be uh very helpful to get the uh to maximize your point in this uh uh in this domain. And also uh this is one of the domains where you could probably easily get score those 10 points. So it could be um very useful domain to focus at, to maximize your points. And then the second uh the second and I think one of the hardest domains of the portfolio is leadership because national Radiology rules are scarce to find, but they are still available. And you could find the roles if you're if you're passionate about uh radiology and if you'd keep uh keep out on the look for uh leadership roles uh as an international medical graduate, the challenges I faced were is that uh I did not know about radiology, undergraduate radiology societies or could not get a role with an undergraduate radiology societies. And I did not know what were the organizations within the UK where I could uh have a role uh in the in a national committee in radiology. So I decided to build myself to be fit for a role in national radiology committees. So, what I essentially did was I uh took up a role as a trust grade. Junior doctor representative did a lot of uh work as a trust grade, uh junior doctor representative, which uh eventually, you know, which eventually uh led me to develop leadership skills and apply to uh uh apply to National level post. Uh where I did get uh uh where I did uh find success in getting a role and uh strategies of leveraging linkedin and social media for opportunities. Uh This was one of the places where I was looking for organizations within UK, where I could uh get, get, get any roles for leadership. And also uh what are the events that's going on within the UK? That we could uh uh we, we could help uh develop a portfolio with and uh uh Facebook. So uh Facebook, Instagram, linkedin are all really good places to look up for opportunities. And I also engaged in a lot of networking events and seeking mentorship. Because as an international medical graduate, you might find it really hard uh to connect to socialize and to network. But uh that would be the place where you'd find the maximum amount of information and also the maximum potential to develop yourself. So always when we go for an event, do network, do seek mentorship, do talk to people. And that really helps. Then um when I was at one of those networking events in uh rare engagement day, I got introduced to widening participations of medics network. And then I started working with them. And uh that led to uh the uh uh that led to me securing full points in leadership and uh uh portfolio. And the next section is teaching. So uh teaching gives you five points and major contribution to national or international teaching um would be giving us five points and four points would be to local or regional teaching again. Um This is under the domain which me and my mentor did feel was easier to secure points at. You have to set your targets on what's achievable in a given time frame because the contribution to national or international teaching should be at least for another. Uh It should be an event that runs for three months. What we did with an address is uh we uh we uh we looked into people who are really interested in teaching and would it, it would also be beneficial to their portfolio. And we organized a national teaching series uh as 20 0 together with an our trust. And then uh we uh make uh and then we developed a platform where we could advert it and actually make it useful to uh and uh useful and contribute to international teaching. And that's how uh II scored the points for teaching. So um uh that's one way the other way would be to host teaching within um the national platforms that you're working for organized teachings for three months. And that's that, that section should be each easily attainable for points then teaching qualifications. So this is a bit tricky because uh PG Cert does give us four point if you already have a master's level teaching qualification, that's well and good. But it was going to be very hard for me to complete a master's level teaching qualification within the application deadline to apply for radiology and APG Cert, which I'm currently doing uh is also very time consuming. And I wasn't, I wasn't quite sure that uh if I would invest all that time in uh my teaching qualification, would I be able to actually prepare for my application? So me and my mentor uh discussed and we felt like at my, at my expertise, two points train, the trainers was uh uh was a way to get some points within the domain because naturally, it is not possible to attain full points in every domain So we have to set our targets and also see what is achievable in a given time frame and moving on to the next domain audit and Q I seven points uh for leading two plus radiology audits that has resulted uh uh that has resulted in a change in practice. So um to for audits, the best place to look, look out for audits would be RCR audit live. They have really a good collection of uh audits and uh easy to do audits and really useful to do audits as well. And uh it would be always uh essential to contact the local uh radiology department because they would know what other audits they would like to be done in the department. And what are the improvements that they would like to have within their department? And when starting in our audit, it's good practice to always do the P DS A cycle. Think about an intervention that is easy to implement and that can lead to a change even if it is a small change. And this is again another section where you can maximize uh your points and you could complete your targets within an achievable time frame, which should be within six months. Uh At, at least that was uh my, uh my timeline and then academic um academic again, five points for phd or MD. If you already have it, that's well and good four points for first author, radiology publication. Uh This was what uh me and my mentor were aiming for that I would um go through uh I would uh uh do a publication again, but a publication did take a lot of time uh for at my stage to go through. So I ended up claiming three points uh for a national radiology presentation. And uh the best way to go about uh presenting your audit or work is to check out conferences around, keep yourself updated. There is a Society of Radiologists in training conference, uh our own I RJ and IRS uh symposium that is also coming up that that could be another place to register. If you're looking to present your uh radiology, present and widening participation of Medics Network BPO Hexad, all of them do host uh radiology associated events and also national conferences. So that might be a good place to present and also probably um get a prize for your presentation because uh the next section is again, prices, which is six points and the radiology price also very importantly, a radiology price or national price. Both of them come, uh both of them do count towards six points. So national price does not need to be related to radiology, you still get six points or finally your distinction uh would also give you six points. And uh this domain I had all three. So uh I I did get six points. And uh if you're, if you do plan on publishing, do publish early in time because the last six months probably would want it for preparing for your M SRA. And another uh change that occurred during this portfolio. Uh This, this time around was that case report in radiology or radiology related case report was moved to one point while previous years uh that did give three or four points, II presume. And then finally reflecting on the journey, the important parts uh is that as we, as we could see, the portfolio itself might look very daunting and you might feel overwhelmed, but breaking the portfolio and seeing what other points you already have and what are the, what are the tasks you could complete within the next six months uh before the application deadline? And uh reflecting on my journey, I also realized the value of networking and mentorship and uh how that had led to me scoring quite, quite well in the portfolio and effectiveness of targeted preparation and practice and overcoming weakness. Uh is, is the most, I is the most important and most vital uh way to go ahead about radiology because we need to be focused, we need to keep focused. And uh that way you, you would get to where you want. And that's my presentation. Thank you. Um If you had any further questions, we can discuss a few now. Um So is the train, the train? Uh oh, I'm just having a look at the Medi Buddy course. Um They seem to offer a two day course on their website. Um It's um half the cost of the Oxford one which I think myself and a few of my colleagues have done, but it's really difficult to know really. I think the safe option that I've done is the Oxford one and I think that's the one we did as well. Um But I appreciate 400 lbs is extortionate. Um So it's about exercising your judgment, read the criteria carefully. It does say on the website that it's CPD 12 points and worth two days, but you really wanna make sure you get the points for it. So I would exercise. So, yeah, this year around, I had used uh future learn uh which is a free trained trainer. Uh They offer a free train, the trainer course for uh NHS professionals. If you're working with an NHS and if you're not working with an NHS, it was 59 10 lbs. It's a five week course. We did manage to finish it earlier than five weeks. And uh it did do uh it did give the entire two points for uh uh two points for the portfolio. So if that's something you want to look into, you could also check that out. Uh It, it is still free for NHS uh professionals. I presume. Yeah. So uh now we can move on uh to the next section of our, of our webinar, which would be so you want to be a radiologist uh starting with V. So we do have one more question. Have you seen it? Yeah. Uh MD. Any subject MD? Any your um II, I'm not catching it. Uh Prieta, do you want to just elaborate on that question? Then we can answer it at the next question break. Just um elaborate a little bit more what you mean. Uh The price domain is also has equal to distinction, what evidence can be used to support to claim this. So uh the price domain says equivalent to distinction. So firstly, it has to be not the uh not just the final year, the distinction, you should have had distinction throughout the five years. So it should be uh uh it should be an entire five year collaborator for distinction. And the evidence should be a letter from your uh uh a letter from your university. Uh specifying how many people got distinction that year? Which year? Uh And uh also how many people went to your class? And what was the classification for distinction and supposed to be somewhere less than 10%? That's what that's the information I know, but you can uh go through he uh he persons. Um there is a document from he on person specification where you can read through this and there will be further information. Uh uh Anyone else information on this? Yeah, can I just add to the uh question about the distinction? So, um I didn't get a distinction every year. Um I got it only twice um in two subjects and I was able to use that. And at least in India, we, we our mark sheets that we get at the end of the year have scores and it says first class distinction or just pass. Um And I just uploaded the uh the certificates themselves and uh just me like highlighted the bit, we said first class and distinction and that was all the evidence I submitted. I still got points straight. Granted, my scoring system was a bit different because I applied three years ago. Yeah, but it was accepted at the time. Yeah, I think this year around they had changed it and they were very specific about having the distinction should be all through the five years or it should be the final year medical transcript should have distinctions all through the five years. But uh again, that would be a good point to divert and check the he specifications if needed. So um then also the time frame of achieving the MD, the there was no time frame, time frame specified anywhere in the documents and MD in any subject is uh that is relevant. Um So for teaching qualification, the masters has to be in teaching. If that's the MD we're talking about. And for, yeah, for academic five points P uh P uh phd or MD could be, could be in any subject. Yeah, I just like to add pre I just cause it was a while ago, it might be worth sending them a message saying, how would you, would this be for points? Um Cause it does say MD. Um but it's just again, it's a bit subjective. Some assessors seem to accept things and other assessors seem to um be very critical and not be as, as kind. So, um there is a degree, unfortunately, of variation in the assessment because they're not all marked by the same people. And um so it's a bit difficult to say, but you might as well apply for the points and if not, you can always appeal if you don't think that you got what, what you deserve. Are there points for being a clinical teaching fellow in teaching and training or do I need to organize a teaching program? I'd say, organize a teaching program. Uh because uh that's exactly what's written in the portfolio. And uh uh how did I organize uh my teaching sessions? I think uh we moved that question to the end of the talk when we have AQ and A, I'd give a pro a proper outlook on how I did uh my sessions. So, um should we move on to our session? Yeah. Yeah. Um OK. Uh Thank you so much. Um Monina, that was a lovely talk. Um And clearly the system has changed quite a bit since I applied. Um It's, it's a lot more complicated now, I think. Um given the competition ratios that are um going up. Um So let me just see if I can share my screen and do let me know if you can see it. Yeah. Are you able to see the screen? Yeah. Ok, wonderful. So my name is R Vishal. Um I am uh an ST two in uh Mersey. Um and I also have the role of a junior clinical lecturer for the Northwest School of Radiology. So I teach um ST ones and medical students. And um I wanna talk to you about um a couple of things today. So we're gonna talk about life as a radiology trainee. And then uh my experience with the M SRA and the sort of tips and tricks that I would have for you guys to um go and uh get a really good scope. So I just want to say thank you to A R juniors for the opportunity to talk about um M Sra prep. Um a little bit of PTSD associated with it, but uh I think it's good and um my goal with this talk is to try and give you the information that uh I wish somebody would have told me earlier on out um that could have made my preparation as uh as effective as possible. So, a little bit about me, um I'm an international medical graduate. I graduated from uh Bangalore. Um I grew up in the Middle East uh in the UAE and um did my internship from 2017 to 2018. Um I took a gap year um in that time I took some exams, you know, the labs. Uh I also took some German language exams. Um I did a clinical attachment in the UK as well as Germany and I ended up sort of getting into the UK first. So I said, let's go with it. Uh I joined as a clinical fellow um in Emergency in A&E in 2019. Um about six months later I had applied and according to fy two standalone um and did that for a year in the Lake District. Um at the end of it initially, I was very much going to be a cardiologist. So I did my I MT for the next two years and did my M RCP. Um I've had a couple of first offer publications, a couple of second offer publications, um international presentations. Um I've presented um at the regional um at regional conferences, national conferences and I won a couple of prizes um in my application at the time. Um I think the competition ratio was around six. and the my portfolio score which was out of 10 at the time was seven, scored 585 in my uh M sra interview score was 97.2 and that back me rank was 67. Um Why did I leave medicine? Um uh The long list of reasons I think mainly it was a combination of burnout and, um, just trying to picture what my future life would be, which I kind of got from speaking to senior registrars and consultants. Um, and it was a very busy life and I did it, you know, during COVID and, uh there was a lot of, um, pros um, that I found, um, you know, when I did my taste a week in radiology, uh it's a whole new world and uh I looked at it and I said, wow, you know, this is, this is where I wanna be. I met people who are like me who are into all the geeky stuff as I was. And I was like, these are my people. Um And these are the, this is the place I want to be. Um just a couple of things that I'm not. Um And I think sometimes um one of the biggest things personally was, um you know, I've met some trainees, I met people who are applying and they, you know, they were really, really, um you know, uh they really achieved a lot of things in life. I was a decidedly average medical student. I had a lot of fun. I partied through med school. Um And I, you know, I have had a bad history with exams. I had to take the MCP 13 times cause I failed twice and finally passed it um on the third time. Um And I'm definitely not someone who like is a workaholic. I love to travel. I um love to spend time um doing lots of things. I, I'm a big, you know, coffee nerd and um I really enjoy racing Sims um and anime. Um and I also have a cat. This is Mimi. So I spend a lot of time being a full-time cat dad. So, question of the day, what's it like? Um, being a radiology trainee. Um And II love the sport. Sometimes it may be good. Uh Sometimes it may should. Um But uh no, I think there's lots of stereotypes that exist um around being a radiologist. Um It's not something you get exposed to a lot uh before you start training. So, you know, a day to week is very useful, not only for your portfolio but to actually get an idea of what the life is like. And is it something you want to do? Um And there's no equivalent to actually going there yourself, but I'm gonna try and explain the best way I can what, what, you know, what uh what life is like you. Yeah, as you can see in the picture on the right, you uh you get to see a lot of uh interesting images. Um Shall we say? Um And um yeah, this is a couple of jokes that happen every now and then. Um So, you know about the pros. Um You know, I think it's a, it's, it's a job that requires a lot of intellectual effort. Um, there's a lot of challenge and, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's really wonderful if you're into that kind of stuff you, you know, you, uh, you get to do, um, you re really, every, every, every scan is basically another puzzle. Uh, some puzzles are easier than others and you're just trying to piece together bits of information like a detective to try and understand what's going on. Um, and, um, if you're someone who loves tech like me, um, it's great. Your job has lots of tech. Um, everybody around you is really into the tech. Um, so you, you know, you don't, you have an excuse to buy really nice stuff for yourself at home as well. Um, so, you know, it's great and then you feel a little, I mean, I do, at least you feel like a boss just sitting there and dictating your reports. Um, a couple of times. Um, one thing is it's, it's a very sedentary job for the most part, you are gonna be sitting a lot throughout your day. Um, so I guess it's important that you get some exercise outside of work. But, um, and the other thing is sometimes it can get a bit lonely. You know, if you're somebody who really enjoys working in a team, if you're somebody who likes to be around people all day, that's not going to be your life. Um, in most departments, obviously, there will be some departments that are a lot more social than others. You would spend a lot of time just working by yourself. Um, if that's something you enjoy then it's perfect. Um, again there's lots of stereotypes. Um, you know, sometimes people, when you tell them you're a radiologist, sometimes they confuse you with a radiographer and you can say no, no, I'm a fully qualified doctor. I've done all of these things. Um, you know, people might think, oh, it's an easy job, you know, you just sat down just looking at stuff, but actually it's a very, I think one of the biggest things that shocked me when I started was um how much more mentally taxing it is compared to like AAA ward job. Simply because um even when you're on call, you have mini breaks, like, you know, you, you're walking from patient to patient, you're going down to document what you've already seen or you're walking up to a different ward on call or you're moving in between patients in Ed or you're checking results in radiology, you know, you finish reporting one thing or you finish scanning one patient and then the next one is there. So it can be quite mentally taxing. So even though it's, you know, 9 to 5 Monday to Friday with not as much on call, you will still, you know, feel that fatigue at the end of the day. Um But you know, at the same time, um you're not pulled in 100 different directions at once unless, you know, you're, you're, you're manning the phone and taking referrals and stuff. Um, and, and, you know, it works for me and, and I think it's really important to think if, if, is that something that works for you as well? Physics is a huge part of radiology. You're going to have to learn it in depth. You're going to have to learn about atoms, you're going to have to learn about spin, you're gonna have to learn about uh magnetic waves. Um And then, you know, sound waves, which is uh which is ultrasound. To be honest, I still have to go back and read about MRI. I, you know, I think I get how it works and then you go back and like, wait, wait, wait a minute, what, what is this and why does this happen? So physics is something that will be part of your professional life, you know, for the foreseeable future, if you take radiology, um there's lots of, you know, there, there are some frustrations sometimes that you get, especially when you're on call and you're taking phone calls. Um You know, one of the big things is, you know, the, the CT scanner, which is basically a donut of truth. Um Sometimes you might feel a bit frustrated because you're like, you ask questions about examination and people are just like, oh, well, you know, I'm not seeing the patient uh, you know, we just need you to get a scan because, you know, my reg that's or something like that and it can sometimes be a bit frustrating. Uh, but, uh, you know, it also, you know, is, is, is good because it's good for the patient in the sense that, um, you know, if they have a life-threatening pathology, it's, it's a pretty quick way of finding out hopefully that's not always applicable. Um And then obviously, you know, you always have the caveat of correlate clinically where you have ambiguous findings. And then pretty much everybody is, you know, it's a Mexican standoff. Um So that's always um interesting uh to see as well, you sometimes see this uh at this. Um And then, you know, the, the the outcome is just OK, we need to see the patient again in clinic. Um something that uh might be uh a to, to, to some people is that often the work we do doesn't go as noticed by, you know, the patients. Um you know, they might not know that you're the one who made their cancer diagnosis or you're the one who found, you know, that tiny tumor, that incidental finding that then eventually made a huge difference in their life. So that's something important to remember that you may not be in the limelight. But, you know, I think personally that's not the source of my satisfaction. So, um you know, it's I II don't care either way, but it's an important thing to keep in mind. Um, social distancing is not really, uh a COVID specific thing in our job. So, uh, you know, you're gonna spend a lot of time by yourself. And, uh, so, you know, I it's, it's nice that way. You know, you're not gonna get, catch as many hospital acquired infections. You're not gonna have as much trouble, especially, you know, as you get older or if you have a long term condition, that sort of makes you more prone to infections. This is a good career in that sense. Um One of the biggest pros I think um is that you, you really get a lot of teaching. Um when I was in I nt one, there were eight of us in that hospital and at any given time, only two of us could attend teaching because the other six were on call or post nights or on nights. Um So we were just, we were on call so much, you know, you just did all your learning on your own time because you could never attend teaching. But in radiology, you really get a lot of teaching, you know, even when you go to get your scans checked, you know, it's pretty normal for a consultant to then quiz you. Um So it keeps you on your toes and you really learn throughout here, which is, which is really useful. So let's come to the meat of the topic. So, um, it's the M SRA. Um, so a couple of like, a lot of people have approached me, obviously, you know, um, with, with how to approach the M SRA. So, you know, at, at this point, what I actually wanted to do was, um, um, ask for a pole. So, uh, wait, hold on. Can somebody put this poll up for me if that's OK. Um, it's just, uh, is there anyone who has actually um sat the M SRA before or, or applied to radiology before? Maybe I shouldn't be getting spiders. All right. Look at the, let me stop shaking my screen for a second. So you got 72% of people who have um haven't they? So this is not the first rodeo, which is, which is often the case. Um And um second question is, is, did you make the cut for the interview or not? OK. We got 15 responses. Give it a little more time. How many people we have one? So these, these, by the way, these responses are completely anonymous, nobody is gonna know who you are. So, yeah, just, just go for it. So, so yeah, you can see that we've got 13 responses. Um And 70% of people didn't and then 30% of people did. Um And this is often the case with a lot of people I've spoken to is that, you know, M sra sometimes happens to be um the thing Um So let's get back to our presentation. So, yeah, so I think this is really important to remember, you know, it, it's really important to, you know, have your portfolio in order and things. But um if you don't clear the M sra cut off, that's the end of your radiology dream for that year, you're gonna have to apply next year. You're going to have to figure out something else to do. So, one of the things that uh one of my mentors told me was that he was like, man, if there's, if you're divided between what to focus your time on, focus it on this because if, if this is the, you know, rate limiting step when it comes to your application, it's the gatekeeper of radiology. So it's, it's really important to take it very seriously and to do to get as high a score as you can and you know, prepare yourself for it. So a couple of technical considerations, it's a free exam, which is great because most exams charge you for messing with your life for six months. Um But this one is free. You get an invite once you get long listed, which means your application is done, you meet the essential criteria. You know, you're a doctor with all the right, you know, entry requirements, they'll give you an invitation. I'll go over the syllabus in detail, but basically you've got a clinical section which has various topics from all over medical school. And then you've got a professional dilemmas paper which is called the SGD or situational judgment test before I will warn you beforehand, this test will haunt your dreams and question your, make you question your life decisions. But there is a way to, to sort of do as best as you can and get a good score. Um It's first come first served. So one of the smart things to do is go to PS and views website. So Pearn View is the company that handles um M sra um you know, the actual exams. So they have centers. So you ideally you will get a center quite close to you because PSN B also does like driving tests and things so you can look at the centers nearby so that when it comes time to book you, you know, you're not searching around and looking at your options and the moment the invite comes, book it. So you wanna plan when you wanna do it, choose your date wisely, have some leave before the exams. You could really go into the exam mode, do do it around on calls or nights, you know, when the exam is going to be. So as soon as you get your rota sort that out, get all the nights out of the way, get all the long days out of the way. So make sure that you've got giving yourself the best chance possible. So it's uh broken into two parts. So you've got your professional dilemmas paper, which is um 95 minutes. Um plus extra time. If you, you know, have um re requirements uh for reasonable adjustments, you can take a five minute break. Um And you've got a clinical problem solving paper which is um 75 minutes. Um, 50 questions with professional dilemmas paper. Um It's not a 5050 split, but almost 50%. You rank questions. So you want to put, what is the most like of these options? Which is the thing that you would, you would do, which is most likely to do, which is least likely to do and everything in between, in order of, you know, um most least. Um and then the clinical problem solving are either um 50% of select X number of um options that fit the question or just a single best answer question and then 97 questions. So, you know, one of the things that's important to note is you've got 95 minutes or 50 questions and then you've got 75 minutes for 97 questions. Um And obviously, depending on if you've been given extra time, that's really important to remember. So the clinical problem solving paper gives you less than a minute per question, um gives you about 40 to 45 seconds per question. So calculate it as you need. Um I'm somebody who has a way of taking an exam. So I do the questions mark the answers when I go back, look at my flag questions and then look at the rest of the questions again to make sure I've not made any silly mistakes, you know, not misread a question that has a double negative in it or things that, you know, often cause me to lose marks um whilst knowing the actual um uh you know, the knowledge that the question is testing. Um So calculate it that way. Um And I'll come on to Mos and this is why Moocs is so important. All right. Um So professional dilemmas, they test your non technical skills. You're not going to be asked, you know, medical theory or anything like that. It is set within the premise of an F two level. Obviously, people who are applying will be applying from all sorts of different walks of life. You may have been a registrar for five years. Um You know, one of my consultants was an ST six orthopedic reg when she switched. Uh two of my colleagues are fully qualified GPS. Um You know, I had one consultant who was a practicing surgeon, consultant, surgeon who decided to change. So you've got to dial it back and go back to that fy two level when you're doing professional dilemmas. Um And it basically tests your core competencies in terms of professional integrity, how you cope with pressure and test your empathy and sensitivity levels on paper. OK. In reality, sometimes you'll find that these questions either make no sense or don't have the options of what the ideal thing you would do. And obviously, everybody is a little different. So you tackle situations differently. And I think that's what leads to the frustration with professional dilemmas. One of the things that I would highly recommend is stop thinking about the answers to the question as what you would do in that situation. Instead imagine the question being framed as if you had the perfect, you know, GMC. Good medical practice. Worshiping. Ho what would that person do in this situation? Um And try and identify by reading the question. What, what's the thing? What are they asking? Are they testing honesty? Are they testing, you know, prioritization? Are they testing uh empathy? Are they testing confidentiality, all of those things? And by sort of trying to understand, look at the options as well as the question you with practice, you'll be able to pick out exactly what it is that they're looking for. Um And that will really help you um sort of order the answers and then practice makes perfect. All right. So another question um that I think is really important is, should you worry or should you be bothered about the difficulty of the exam? You know, I spoke to somebody just a couple of days ago who told me, um, you know, I sat the M SRA twice. Um and I've not made it. Uh and, you know, I, you know, prepared but uh my, you know, cause the M SRA happens over a couple of weeks. So it's not obviously the same questions for everybody. So, you know, there'll be different, you know, your, your, your M SRA exam will be random compared to somebody else's. So she said, um you know, oh I had a lot of questions from urology and oncology and you know, I II you know, I wasn't expecting that the MSA is not about your, your score. Um What's the word for it? It's not about your ver and score. The MSR is about your relative score. It doesn't matter what your score is. It only matters how your score compares to everybody else. That is what it's all about. It's not, you know, you need 500 you need 550. The, the benchmark has been changing for the cutoff every single year. The game is all about, can you work harder than the other people applying to make the cutoff? That's it. So scores as well. Uh And the other thing is, scores are normalized and basically what that means is it's not like each question has a certain mark if you get it right. Each question is weighted which means they look at once you take the exam all the and you know, they make this graph there, there's a bit of complex math which I don't understand. So don't ask me, but basically what it means is they look at each question and they see how many people answered it. So for example, if everyone's got it right or 95% of people have gotten it right. That question is too easy, which means it's not going to get much waiting if only 5% of people answered right? Or let's say 30% or whatever that means the question is too difficult. Again, it's not gonna get as much waiting. So each, you know, when you get a paper full of difficult questions, those questions are probably not gonna contribute as much to your score as the most standard ones. So every single thing is tested, are you somebody who makes silly mistakes and, and and loses marks that you could have easily otherwise gotten those questions will have good waiting. So you don't wanna do that. Um Are you somebody who's able to score on the obscure questions and the easy questions, those things, you know, everything matters. So your, your score doesn't tell you how well you did in the exam, your score tells you how well you did compared to other people. So don't worry about, I would say don't worry about the difficulty that plays no role in your preparation. It's all about how you're preparing compared to your players. It's all about the competition, right? So this is like kind of the breakdown of a normalized score. I wouldn't bother actually reading this because it, it doesn't really matter, but that's basically what I was talking about. So, you know, um Sun Su um said that strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. And tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Um And the way I interpret this is you can plan all you want, you can strategize all you want. But if that plan is not tailored to you, it's not gonna work if you tell yourself. All right, I've got, you know, CMS in February, which is seven months from now. From today, I'm gonna sit, I'm gonna study eight hours a day, every day. I'm not gonna go out with friends. I'm not gonna do anything else. I'm just gonna focus on this exam. So I'm gonna work because, you know, you're not, you, you know, you're not the best master or the best slave to yourself. So you've got to be smart about it. You've got to prepare, you've got to start slow, ramp it up and, you know, plan your studies in a way that it's actually achievable and not something that is something you've never done before because that's not going to work. So start early. Definitely, uh get the ball rolling. Um I always break it down by speciality. So I go, you know, one speciality at a time. Um And I would say, you know, an important thing to remember is if you wanna reach your destination, you should know where you're starting from and where you're going. So one of the things that I highly recommend is even if it's today or tomorrow, do a more paper just to start with. All right. That will tell you where you stand at the start of your prep and do a mock paper every couple of weeks or every month and then do more as you get closer to the exam that will give you a benchmark and tell you, am I getting better? Am I the same? And don't worry about? Oh, this mock has topics that I haven't sur it doesn't matter. The mock helps you in many different ways. Um And you know, I'll go into that um in a bit, but I highly suggest doing a mock in the beginning in terms of reading materials. Um Two or three good question banks is all you need. There's four popular options. There's M CQ Bank past Med past test and E Medica. Um M CQ Bank and E Medica usually recommended the most. I didn't use E Medica cause I thought it was a bit expensive. I use M CQ Bank past med and then a little bit of past test. Um And then for the um professional dilemmas, uh This book is really nice Oxford Assessed progress, situational judgment test. Um It's not a textbook, it just has Bits and Bobs. So if you've done your question banks and you still feel like, oh, there's a bit more, I'd like to read. This book is really good for that. It, it explains things a bit better. Um M CQ Bank, I would say if you're doing, you know, th I would say pick MC is really good. The questions are very representative of what comes in the exam and the explanations are all right. Past medicine has questions that are not as representative of the exam. I, I've done that M RCP and I've noticed that they just copy questions uh from the MCP question mind, but it has great explanations. So the explanations are really useful. They give you an in-depth um you know, uh set of materials. So it, you know, if you've got a question on diabetes and an antidiabetic drug and we'll just talk about that drug, we'll give you all of them and everything you need to know. So it really helps you prepare properly. Um Past test is similar to pass med, but the answer is explanations are not as good. So if you had to choose between the two, I'd say go for past med E Medica, I can't really comment on cause I never used it. So you know, be smart about your preparation. Um Don't go back and sit down and you know, page one, the anatomy of the thorax. You can't work like that. You've got to just do all the things that are relevant to you and move on. So questions really help with tailoring your studies and focusing it to where you, where you need to prepare for. Um like I said, make a strategy that suits you. Some people like to sleep five hours a day. Some people like to sleep 10 hours a day, build up timetable that works for you. Um Plan how much you need to do, do in a day and then just focus on that. Don't think about how much you have left, make it time for social life, make it time for exercise, make it some time to just relax, sleep, well, eat well, cannot stress this enough. Don't be that person who is just let's go of everything because it's not gonna help your brain. Um This is a marathon, not a sprint, it's gonna be a couple of, you know, five, maybe 4 to 6 months of heart prep. So you can't just pull all nighters and, and, and, and do this. Um Finding a group of friends is really useful. Um It is difficult. Um Everybody is different. Um So just avoid people who waste your time. Um Because if you don't get in because of M sra score, you're the only one responsible. Um One of the things that I really use is, is, is called Microsoft one note, which is a great program. Um It allows you to make all of these notes. You can put screenshots in there. I put an ipad with an Apple pencil, so I just write my own notes. Um And the best bit is it syncs across all the device, devices. So if you sat down at work and you have nothing to do, just open up your phone and you'll see the notes you made yesterday, just go over them and it really helps revise. Um and this comes back to just making it as easy for yourself as you can because one of the best things about these notes, so they're searchable, it will even read your handwriting and search through that. So you sat there and you know, you, somebody mentions, you know, tetrology of F to you, then you're just like, 00, what was, what were the four things in of all the top feature? Always open my phone, search off immediate your own personal, not show up any p the morning, you have any pictures. So you quickly revise that. So it really helps you connect that to memory. Um These are the topics um that are tested. Um It's just, you know, it's mostly general medicine with some urology, some uh pediatrics, um some ent um put in. So, you know, uh make sure that you cover each bit and you know, work on your weaknesses. I think that's why I have put this up. So if there's certain topics you find that you say, oh ophthalmology, I don't know much about that. That's what you need to work on because like I said, you might get a paper which has a lot of ophthalmology or a lot of pharmacology. And you know, saying that that wasn't one of your strong topics is not helping you or anybody else. Um So yeah, repetition is the mother of perfection. You can make notes, you know, you can read all the books you want. But if you don't reread them, you know, unless you're somebody who has an atic memory, you're gonna forget that's normal. So keep reviewing what you're doing and, and keep sort of polishing it until, you know, you're able to recall without much effort. Um So yeah, uh situational judgment of professional dilemmas really. I hated this. But, um, but, uh, you know, it is what it is. So you have to kind of make it work. Um, so yeah, this is an important thing. I think if you are somebody who just does one revision of a question bank that's not gonna work. If you do one revision of 20 question banks, that's still not gonna work. But rather if you do your questions a second time, you know, you will identify what are the things you are not remembering? Where are your weak points and you get a solid theoretical backing. So that if there's a question on a certain topic in the exam, if, if there's a question about the same topic, but not the same question, you'll still be fine. So you might meet two people who did exactly like they did pass med and, and see you back twice and one person gets through and one person doesn't, there's a very good chance that the person who got through was also reading the theory behind, you know, behind the questions and that really makes a big difference in, in your prep as well. Yeah. Work on your weaknesses. Like I said, the MSR is a cruel mistress does not allow for these kind of excuses. So don't set yourself up for failure. Um And you should be thinking about your weaknesses or this is a topic that I'm really bad at. So I need to go over it again and again and again to, to sort of make up for uh make up for my my own weakness. Um And don't take a low score on any mock or any questions sessions personally, the whole point of preparation is to find out what you need to learn and then learn that. So just focus on hammering the information into your brain. So you don't repeat the same mistakes. Um You know, um professional dilemmas, like I said, you wanna be thinking about what an ideal perfect, good medical practice doctor would do. Again, don't take the answers personally. There will be conflicting answers in different questions and the bottom line is, it comes around to setting a question paper as to what the correct order will be, but take heart in the fact that this is not just you, everybody has this problem in every person who's taking the exam does not know what the ideal set of answers are. So it is part and parcel of the game and and don't worry about it, just form a strategy and try up your score as you go along again. Benchmark, benchmark, benchmark, um good exam technique comes down to how much you practiced it. You know, you know that this is how long your paper lasts. This is how long it takes for you to do a question. This is how much time you have per question. And the more you do it, the more your mental clock develops and you're able to kind of have that mental clock running. So that even if you're, there's something goes off in the exam, maybe one question took you a bit too long, you're able to compensate because it happened to you in a mo so set exam conditions at home do not get up from your seat up parking using the loo or something, shut all the doors, tell people not to disturb. You don't be distracted, don't change your screen, do that paper. So it takes about half a day to do a walk and to check your answers. So, reserve that time in your schedule and keep benchmarking on the day of the exam show up at least 15 minutes before your, um, your allotted time. Keep your mind clear. Um It's not the time to panic. It's the time to just put all the effort you've put in before the exam be well fed, well hydrated. Last thing you want to do is be thirsty or hypoglycemic during the exam. And, uh, don't broo on the exam once it's done that, you know, one of the most fun things I say is, you know, post exam, the results are not today. Use problem, the tomorrow use problem. Um, I love to plan what I'm gonna do after an exam. Either I'll buy myself something, go on a trip or just spend some time being the most lazy person I can just because I can. Um So that really gives me a lot of um motivation. Um And uh a nice meeting that I like is during your prep panic right before your exam, during your exam, before your results come and then when it's time for the next step, panic again. And I think that really helps. Um That's the end of my presentation. I've got my email here. If anyone's got any questions, you can always get in touch with me, I'll help you to the best of my abilities. Um And I sincerely hope that all of you um get a trading number. Um And um I hope this talk was useful for you. Um And yeah, take any questions if you have any. Thanks a lot, Michelle, the presentation was really nice and it does, did take us down a trip on our memory lane. So, um I triggered some ptsd today for people. Ok. So we have a few questions, which mo would you suggest? Ok. Um So the question banks themselves, um the uh M CQ Bank, I think as well as past net have Mox. Um and one of the best sources for me for Mox was thank you uh was um just being on a couple of Facebook groups. Um and whatsapp groups just, just, just type in and you will find loads of groups and often on these groups, people start circulating mock papers that they find from somewhere or the other. Um Or they say, oh, I've done these mock papers from, you know, this website and it's really good. Um So that, that really helped me. Um I think pa test also has some mock papers. Yeah, I think, yeah, pa and PA both have mock papers. I think they have 10 each. So that's quite a bit. Yeah. Adding on to that. I think I also went through a few mocks. I did uh Samsung mocks. There are official official mock papers of M sra from uh EE which were really useful, especially for S GT and uh other uh and all the other mos that which I mentioned there. Yeah. So um then do I also need to register for the event before knowing if abstract has been accepted or not? I'm confirming the details of Yasmin and I'll let you know by the end of the session and loved all the memes. Thank you. The presentation was really nice and fun. Great motivational talk. All right, that's great. And that will move to the final presentation of our webinar uh interview preparation by Gautam. Hey guys. So thank you for I RG and Rare for giving me this opportunity. And also as always, it's been a wonderful talk so far. Thank you Michelle even, I didn't know some of those things you told about M SRA and it was quite helpful. So I'm gonna talk about uh into your prep, sorry. Just so a little bit about myself. Uh Before that, are you able to see my presentation? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So a little bit about myself. I did my medicine back in India and I graduated in 2020. And then while I was trying to prepare for COVID came to India and it ruined my whole journey, delayed it by 1.5 years. And then I got uh got into Ashford and Saint Peter's in Surrey in December of 2022. And I started working as an F two. I also work with Mua in the same trust. Mua was just uh has just started her post six months before me and we worked together because we both loved radiology so much. Uh And uh we started preparing for all the portfolios together and we helped each other a lot. So it's all it, it felt like I had a friend to help me out with academic aspects as well, and then we started preparing for the M SRA together, like we said, uh we made a group of friends in whatsapp and we meet up every few three days or four days and we started prepping for the M SRA. And my bad luck was that I didn't score well enough in M sri just got 551. And because of my bad luck, the, as, as we always know, the competition ratio got increased and the cutoff was moved to 555. And then I had to wait for two weeks to know whether I'll be interviewed. And then they finally gave me a slot, but they gave me the first day, which was even before the actual interview slots. So I'll be the first person going on the first day. And I, as always, me and Munira started uh planning and we started prepping using the last year scenario. And then on the fifth of March, they introduced a new information saying they changed the whole interview pattern. So this is the interview pattern that they have introduced now. So the key I uh changes are there are two stations, station one and station two station one, they told it's prioritization of clinical situations. It's a 10 minutes administration. So what it actually means is for they will put up a question and they will give us one minute time to read the question. And then after that, you have six minutes to talk about how you would approach that question. And then uh after you have talked about your approach, there will be three minutes left and in those three minutes, the examiners will ask you follow up questions. It can be anything ranging from why you approach this this way, why you didn't think about it in another way? Or it could be just like follow up questions like, oh you told me you will involve the uh cardiology registrar. What do you think the registrar is gonna do? This is just to get an overview of what our clinical knowledge is. And the second uh station is specialty skills. Uh This is where they lost three white space questions, but I will talk about them later in the session. So what we uh thought was when we got this new information, I think because everyone says radiologist also need to be good clinically. Even if you think about the application process, the portfolio actually trains you to be good in an academic perspective, like doing posters, doing audits uh leadership skills and the S JT test your clinical knowledge through the clinical questions. And then they bring both of these together and then again, ask you questions whether you're good enough to be a radiology register in the interview. So after this new information, like always, it was panic all the online groups that I used to follow all the whatsapp Growth Facebook groups, everyone started panicking. Everyone was like, what does this mean? What does prioritization mean? What does clinical prioritization means? And all the radiology groups who are into this interview, prep like Ir Juniors W PM and uh rad even RCAS all these organizations kept webinars and what they told us pre 2018, there used to be a separate session for the ST one training interviews where they used to give you radiological requests and they ask you to prioritize them based on most appropriate to least appropriate. Sometimes they will also include wrong request. For example, ultrasound for a query of testicular torsion in out of hours. So as a registrar, you have to tell in your interview, I don't think this is a, a good request or on appropriate request because testicular, first of all, is a clinical diagnosis. So this is what we all prepped for. As always, I searched a lot of online groups and I prepped uh using a lot of webinars. And I also had free uh interview sessions as well. W PM and I uh did uh interview sessions which are quite good. I don't know if they're gonna plan to, you do it again this year. But I think I would uh inquire regarding that and let you guys know, but they were quite good and those interview sessions have be prep as well. So this was like how we, I was talking about giving a mock before you do your actual prep. I gave the first interview and they told me I haven't, they told me that it actually is very apparent that I didn't prepare. Well, I know what I was talking about. I just didn't have a systemic way of uh telling it. And once I had that feedback, I was able to build up on that. And I had another uh mo and then again, me and Munira used to sit together, either we meet up at each other's place, most likely Muir's place and we sit for 67 hours preparing for interviews or we, if you are not able to meet, we will just uh uh do a zoom call and we will prep for the interviews and in my interview because I prepped this and I went for the interview my first session and they told me so it was like we all, all, we need to be quite calm, right? 15 minutes before my interview, they told me my interview got delayed by 30 minutes because I haven't had any specialty training application interviews before this. I didn't know whether this is something like a spam email or whether it's something uh that is actually true. So I had to spend that 15 minutes before my actual interview to try to contact the he support to try to sort out whether this is an actual uh issue. And they told me, yeah, this is true. And I have to wait 30 minutes. So again, I have to go into my Zen mode trying to calm myself because I wanted to get over this interview as soon as possible so I can treat myself to a chocolate milkshake. And I've been looking forward to it for the past two weeks and now it got pushed 30 minutes later. So I was sitting there and then they came on and then, uh, examiners told me, uh, ok, because we started uh, late, we are gonna skip the introduction and we are gonna go straight into it. And then they gave me a, a scenario and they told me, ok, prioritize this clinically, not radiologically, like they knew that I have prepared for it, radiological prioritization. And I it was diabolical. I can literally see my mind break into two because this is do or die. I haven't had a good score in Emary. I've got a second chance to get an interview and now all the stuff that I prepare for, they told, OK, let's throw it out the window. Uh You're gonna do something completely different. And I don't, I didn't know what to do. It's just at that point I had to do, it's do a day. So everything that I learned, everything from M sra to interview, everything came rushing to me at that point in a bit of an adrenaline rush. And then I just was like, OK, let's go through the scenario. So I the station is clinical prioritization, right? This is my rules for the station, I'll give you an example question so that you will know what I mean when you do any, any of these prioritization questions, they want you to prioritize it clinically uh instead of radiologically what it means is let me give you a question. So this is a sample question. So a 30 year old male, he fell from 2 ft height on arrival. His G CS was seven by 15. They have all because he fell from a height. Anyone who had worked in Ed would know they already did a trauma series scan and the CT head shows a small extradural hemorrhage with a mild midline shift, but there's no ventricular effacement. I didn't know what this effacement meant. I just moved on. So this question would be displayed in the interview and you have one minute to read through it and ct thorax, there's multiple rib fractures on the right with chemo pneumoperitoneum with the midline shift. That was a red flag for me at this point. And that's a CT abdomen showing an active contrast from splenic vessels. So they asked me to prioritize this patient clinically. So now I know I need to work on this based on my clinical findings. The first thing that's pointing to me is he fell from a height of uh 2 ft. So I'm worried about the C spine that's reduced gcs. I'm worried about this. A I'm worried about this mild midline shift in this uh uh cerebral uh cavity because it can cause coning, this can be quite disastrous. I'm also worried about the hemoperitoneum which already is causing a midline shift and there is an active leak from the splenic vessels as well. So this is a scenario where anything that can go wrong has gone wrong. So again, I have to prioritize this and I have to justify my reasons. So I started prioritizing this patient and I started justifying my reasons. The thing is when you're justifying these reasons, think about all the possibilities. What I mean by this is again, you should have a systematic approach, right? So I used a two year approach, airway, breathing, circulation, disability and everything. The beautiful thing about a two years, it's arranged in a way where it's arranged in order in which of these things can kill you first. If there's something wrong in the airway, you are not gonna think about breathing because anything that's wrong with the airway will kill you faster than anything that's wrong with the breathing. So again, I had to answer using this systemic approach. So I told them the first thing because this is a male who has fell from height of 2 ft. I'm first worried about the c spine, but I would also like to do a systematic A to e approach. Then I told them in a, I'll be looking for patency if I feel like the patient is not able to mention his own airway, I will think about airway adjuncts if I'm not able to use that and the patient is not tolerating. I'll always ask for an anesthetic review so that they can think about intubation and while breathing. I because I already know there is he or peritoneum. I'm thinking about the other patient should go for emergency thorax and to relieve the pressure. And we're going to see obviously the patient because he is hemode unstable at this point because of the bleed. And the mile I'm thinking about maybe we should give him about blood transfusions uh doing his vitals again. 12 lead ECG S and D I, I've only written here the most specific points because those are the ones that they are looking for. But when you explain, you have to tell. So when moving to breathing, even though I know the results of hemo hemo peroneum, I would like to do inspection to check for uh bilateral vertical chest rays. I'd like to palpate the chest wall and also uh per the chest wall and also auscultate for any added sounds. This shows like you're well prepared and when it comes to you because you had a fall from height of 2 ft, you have to look for any other signs of open wounds or bleeding. It can be any other fractures as well. So again, these are the rules that I would ask you to keep in mind when you do a prioritization, you have to justify why you are prioritizing this in tho in those orders. And you also think about all the possibilities. For example, when you're going from A to E because you know that there's an intracranial hemorrhage, you can also tell them, OK. At this point, I'm also thinking about getting a neurosurgical opinion in the first instance that shows that you have a multidisciplinary approach to the case. And when you move to be there is already a midline shift, right? So you are thinking about involving the emergency medicine registrars to do any emergency procedures. That also shows that you are a safe doctor. Again, there's an active bleed and there's also uh there's two major organs which are affected like the la uh pleural cavity and also the splenic vessels and there are hemo instability as well. So you think about putting a major hemorrhage protocol or major trauma protocol. These are keywords that you need to be using. So they know what you're talking about. There are two different scenarios, you can answer this question, right? What I mean by uh justifying your reason is for example, if I do a to year and I tell I'm gonna focus first on R we because the patient has a gcs of eight and that's gonna be the key thing ruling out the C spine injury, I would be right. But if Munira comes in and she says there's a significant midline shift in the uh I mean, medicinal shift in the chest. So I'm quite worried about that. So what I would do is even though I'm doing a a systemic approach, I would first involve the emergency register in the first instance to look at the chest. So to do for any emergency procedures, she is also right and I'm also right because we both are trying to do what is best for the patient and we both are trying to be safe because our combined goal is do no harm and also do everything that's within our capabilities is not gonna try to intubate a patient at an F two level. And I'm not gonna try to do a thorough synthesis at an F two level as well. So that's why the order of reasoning might differ between each candidate. As long as you don't tell anything that's totally unsafe, it's completely fine and you will be scored and given good marks on your hand then moving on to station two. So this is why you need a lot of prep beforehand. And what helped for me is these are called white space questions. Like, tell me, what do you know about radiology? Tell me the life of a radiology, regr to a radiologist. Tell me what a consultant, radiologist does in his day to day life. This needs a lot of prep and this prep you can only do when you have done a test a week and you have explored and asked questions to them, including the advantages and disadvantages because some of the registrars told me the disadvantages is, it can feel quite lonely at some point. Yes, you do work as a team member. But when you're going through training, when you're trying to learn things on your own, everyone has their own uh way of interpreting scans. And when you're trying to do that, you have to do certain things alone and do certain learnings alone. And it can be quite touching on your mind mentally because you're going from one scan to the next. And you, even though you have colleagues, you can ask for help, most of the learnings happen on your own. So you need a lot of preparation beforehand and you need to ask these questions to the register to know what goes on there. Like what helped for me was if there is a question, like what goes on in a day of a radiologist. And if I have wrote down key points, I would only write key points like radiology means uh teaching at 8 a.m. hot seat reporting at 11 lunch break evening uh portfolio development. These are the only three key points I have in my uh word document. And then when I'm practicing it, I have to make it so that it becomes as a paragraph and all the paragraph should all only be up to two minutes to 2.5 minutes. Because if you talk less than this it seems like you're rambling on so fast that you're not able to keep it up or able to listen what you're saying. If it's more than this time, then it feels like you're rambling on for too long, you'll lose their attention again. You will sit and type a lot of these word documents for a lot of these questions and then you have to record your voice and then listen back to it to know, I know it's very cringy to listen to yourself in a recording. I can't believe this is how people hear voice and this is quite eye opening, but you have to keep listening to them to know that where you are making a mistake where you wanna say something, but you're not able to verbalize it because maybe as an international medical graduate, some of those words are not quite fluent to you. Maybe because of the differences in the accent or some of those words may, might be broken down into simpler terms, which doesn't interrupt your flow of communication again. Once you done a voice recording, it's better to do a video recording after that to know how your face looks when you're answering those questions. Because if you look like you're staring through them and staring into their soul, it looks quite unnerving to the uh interviewers, you have to, even though you're not someone who is quite flexible in that uh situation because no one is, we are all in there for interview. We all want to get a training number. It's do or die. No one's gonna be relaxed even though when they say I was cool as a during the interview. But you have to act, you have to move your hands around. I literally had to learn and actually I had to practice moving these hand gestures. And I also smile. I have to remember every 15 seconds. I have to smile. I have to make a change in my facial expression. So they know I'm not just sitting there and talking like a robot. I am a person with human. I'm a human being with three things. This helps and again practicing with friends and strangers. Because when you practice with friends, you have a familiarity knowing that you can make a mistake, you can make a silly mistake and your friends are gonna just laugh it off. And once you do that, when you practice with the strangers, it's almost like interviews because you don't know what this person is gonna judge you for and you don't know how cringy it's gonna be when what you're saying because you might be thinking about talking about your audit like VT prophylaxis or chest X ray. While the stranger could be someone who has already has a phd. They would look at you and be like, oh, this is such a simple project, man. How are you gonna talk for two minutes? But that's what it actually happens in interview because most of them are consultant radiologists, all of all the projects that you are saying is not gonna impress them. They're just looking to see how much you are in love with radiology and how much what you have gone through that you have used in your portfolio and your thought about your long term plans as well. So the sample questions would be, what do you think about A I being a threat to radiology? What do you know about teleradiology? How important is research in radiology and talk about radiology curriculum? There are so many different questions, so many different uh examples. I the resources I used was there is uh yes, ct one bar ST one radiology guide interview book. You can just Google it. It's the first book on there. It has uh Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We sha has that. Yeah, that's the book. Yeah, that book has lots of different questions. So you and they have sample answers as well. But I know it's very tempting to mark those answers up. But the issue is when you mug those up and when you try to practice and you listen to yourself, even you can identify that you have mug those up. That's why when I tell you when you go through those interview books, write the keywords that's unique to you and then make a paragraph of yourself so that it sounds much more natural and always this answer is also two minutes to three minutes. And when you give an answer, always answer so that it's in a balanced way. What I mean by this is uh why do you want radiology? My obvious honest answer is because I want training number and I want good work-life balance. I can't do medicine for so long because I've seen how the consultants work. I wanna have a good work experience where I wanna be rich and I also wanna be happy. But obviously, I can't tell this uh because it won't be a good answer, but this is my genuine answer. So when you think about how important this research in radiology, you shouldn't just jump be right? Research is so important to radiology without research, none of the medical specialties can coexist or even exist. Research is the one thing that's gonna be number one in future. No, you should give a balanced answer for. I would start the answer by saying that's a good question. But from my own personal experience, talking to the radiology, registrars during my t weeks and also through my colleagues in other department, I think there are pros and cons to research as well. The pros being doing research helps you improve your own clinical judgment and clinical a and it also advances the medical education and the medical technologies as a whole which benefits patients on a larger scale. Like you can use researchers which are done in other parts of the countries to even be helpful for the patients in our own hospital. But the cons of the researchers are, when you do research, it's quite time consuming. It's not a short term project, it's a long term commitment. So whoever is involved in research are being taken out of their clinical duties from clinical radiology, which means more workload for radiology registers who are actually not involved in research, which again creates an issue because the radiology workforce is already quite low, which I got to know from the R CS uh workforce census of 2023. So if you give a balanced answer and then you finish it off again, you finish it off by saying uh but uh from my personal experience, I don't think research is something that I would be quite interested in, but I would wanna learn about how research as a radiology register would be like during my training. So you already told you are not a research person, but you also have an open mind so that you will know what being involved in the radiology research is like you also thru the new information saying RCR workforce sensors, workforce shortage. So this all knows that you are, you have read about this. So you need to link all these points and this is a balanced answer. You can't say yes, research is the best thing that's happening or you can't say no, I can't be bothered to sit in a lab and do research man. I need projects which I can do in three weeks, not six months or three years, you have to give a balanced answer. So this was my experience. Uh The only thing that I would say if you are taking only one word from this talk about my presentation, I would say just practice. Practicing is the key, either practice with yourself or with friends or with strangers. Keep on practicing. There are loads of uh online groups. Facebook groups, whatsapp groups, you can find them. And there are lots of people who are like you who are just trying to get into radiology, who are looking to find training partners, you can practice with them. So, any other questions? So there's not many questions in the chat box but thanks a lot, Gautam. That was another trip down the memory lane. What a nice presentation. Thank you. So with uh this, we'll be moving on to our Q and AQ and A session. Any questions that you have are welcome. And we start with Munir. Um How did you look up for M SRA groups? Um So how I personally look for M SA groups was uh I went through Facebook. I checked for MSR groups. There, there is an international medical graduate uh patient uh Facebook, which is quite active and sometimes you do find uh vital information there. And there's also UK RST uh group in whatsapp where there's a lot of good information available on preparation. And um other than that, um Gaut uh Gautam, do you have anything to add or do you have anything to add? Um Yeah, so like uh like you were saying, like if you're unsure of how to get to UK RST, they have a website now, but also um one of the admins of that group, Asim Khan, he is the one who leads that group. So, um if you just message him, um he'll add you to that whatsapp group. I'm part of that whatsapp group. So it's got um registrars as well as people who are applying. And then um each year, if you get in, then you can leave the group or you can stay to help um other people. So that's how I ended up on that group. They do mock interviews as well and it's free, I think now they're charging a nominal fee just because it for their costs and everything goes to charity if they go up. But um they, it, it, it really helps in that sense. Um Go around your department as well. You go at best place I think is, is go to the, go to radiology or go to the radiology secretaries and ask them if they can find out who has done a taste a week in your department. Most departments have at least one taster person at any given time. So you will be able to establish a local network within your hospital of people who are serious about doing it and you can make a whatsapp group with them and just use that to branch out if they know other people who are applying, you can make a group like that and that group will be more local apart from even the larger groups. Ok. I think that was very helpful. So we have lots of questions piling up. Um Then we have, may I know if or any course that you took or mocks for interviews that you found helpful? So um me personally, I did take a course from rad interviews.com. Really nice course was very helpful and both me and did the same resources. So that was one did broadcast uh interview course, very helpful. Their uh interviews were uh interview mocks were a bit pricey around 90 lbs per mo I did take three mos from them and it was actually very helpful and then uh UK RST as well, which I mentioned also uh gives out uh mocks and they are uh they, they are not very expensive and that those mocks were also helpful. So those were the three resources that I had used and also the book uh Vishal had mentioned. So other than that, is there any other additional resource you would like to add? Uh Vishal gam? No, II personally felt like um I just did the mocks myself and I did them with like you, I did three and I think those guys are really good. They're from me. And uh so I know that one of them is a consultant. Um And they give you really honest feedback, like in my first mo just literally told me to my face, what are you doing, man? Like you need to like up your game. This is not enough, you're not going to make it. And I think sometimes having that feedback coming from someone who's done, it really, really helps you because it motivates you and helps you find out where you're going wrong and they'll also give you scores and that will help you benchmark and do better in. Yeah. So I did. My first mock was the one with A R juniors where they told me I haven't prepared much. That's like even before preparation, I just wanted to give the mock and then I prepared for some more days. And then I gave a mock with uh Ks RT and the cost was around 10 to 20 lbs, I guess because most of that goes to charity. So I did with them again. They told me I will uh i it seems like I have prepared some, but I still need uh more uh improvement in my can uh cants and the way I need to express answers, this is when they told me to close it up, give a balanced answer. And then, like I said, I also use the rad cast uh interview mocks I took two or three mos from them. It is quite pricey. But since they uh what to say, their feedback is quite brutal and you can be uh you can actually gain a lot from it. I got to know a lot about my preparation and how to improve that. Uh And then all the while preparing for this, the same book, I think the link has been put in the group in the Q and A. Now I use the same book with Mua and we just come up with our own paragraphs of how to answer questions. Yeah. And the next question is how long each of you have been preparing for M SRA and your top three resources, any opinion on E Medica grams? So I personally uh prepared for six months given that uh I was uh working as a full time doctor in medicine and orthopedics, both really hectic departments. So uh I prepared for six months. I started with past medicine to make sure that my knowledge is consolidated, finished past medicine in August, took the September attempt, uh did not score very well, but uh knew where my deficits were. I just took the September attempt for GP to see what MSR is as an exam. And I really recommend anyone sitting for the January attempt to just go through September attempt. So you could probably see where you are, where your deficits are because it's sort of a real walk. And then um I did past medicine M CQ Bank. After finishing past medicine, once, went on to M CQ Bank, finished M CQ Bank, went on to past medicine again and then uh went through Samson question bank, went through Aurora. Uh I did not do e medica um did not have the time for it, did a bit of past test and that was about it. The last one month was anti the mo mo mo I had taken all of Samson's mocks past medicine, Mos and uh M CQ Bank. I cannot remember if they had mocks. But uh yeah, so that was the six months. And for S TT Oxford S tt um uh the uh the book, I wish I had suggested we had used that and the M sra uh uh M SA Mos paper from uh from he and uh those were the other uh resources that we used. Um One of the things that came as very vital and useful was uh preparing S JT with a group of friends who uh because since we are all international medical graduates, S JT might not be our strongest uh suit. So me uh got them. And then there were uh uh F twos who had graduated from here applying to radiology or different specialities which require and we used to sit do S TT questions together and then reason out why our thought processes are quite different from how uh how someone who is trained here approaches the S TT questions. And when we did uh as we did this through a period of six months, we had enough uh time to change our thought processes and actually think in the way an ideal GMC uh approved sho is supposed to think so that helped us improve our S TT scores as well. And that was basically mine. And uh Gautham preparation uh VHA would you like to add? Yeah. So I think for me, it was a little different because I just take MRC P part two. just before the MS R and I had my family visit. Um but I think the earlier you start, the better. It is. So like uh when you pointed out, I think six months is a good time to, to get cracking so soonish now is the time actually. So uh to start for a February attempt. Um And also somebody asked, how do you um work with, uh how do you combine M Sra with, with the busy work life? I was in, I was in internal medicine. I was doing shitloads of on calls and nights and, and long days and whatever you can find. Um And I think the most important thing is like I said, make it as easy for yourself. So plan. So the way I planned it was, I would take half a day as a unit of time. So let's say if I have a normal day, 9 to 5. That's one unit of time. A weekend is two units of time. Um, and, uh, an on call day, zero units of time. Ok. I would just assume that if I'm doing a 9 to 930 day shift, I'm going to be dead at the end. And even if I sit and open my book after I had dinner and question my life choices and, you know, watch some TV. I'm not going to get much done. So if you know your rota up to wherever, you know it, you can kind of say that, OK, if your unit of time is xi have, let's say 500 units or whatever, you know, 200 units before my exam, then you want to write down how many, what is the amount you need to cover? So I need to do, you know, I have combining all my question banks done twice. I have 4000 questions to get through. Um you know, looking at my theory material, which in MSR is not a lot, you, you kind of go off your question mark. So let's see, you just, you have 4000 questions and you have 200 units of time to do it. That tells you that for every unit of time you need to be doing 20 questions, right? So that means on a 9 to 5 day 20 questions is your goal on a weekend? 40 questions is your goal per day. And then you want to put at least one unit of time a week, preferably two to catch up because you're not going to stick to it. It's not going to be, every day is gonna be perfect. Some days you're gonna sit in front of your book and you're gonna finish and it be like, I don't remember anything. So split it according to that and II go by week. So then I say, OK, how much do I need to get done this week? And then I have a white board. I just literally put that number down. And then as I finish every day, let's say I've done my 20 questions. I'll take, I'll, I'll put 20 there, I'll put 40 there and I'll, I'll go like that and then always also give yourself a little bit of time, one unit of time I will use to chill or this evening, I'm gonna go meet a friend. I'm not gonna talk about my exam, I'm just gonna relax or I'm gonna eat my favorite food. Um And that way you are broken it down and your only focus for that day is how much you need to get done for that day. You're not worried about how much you have left, how many revisions you have left, how much time you have left and you're not worried about your own calls or your busy workplace because you've organized your schedule around that work life and then having your notes digital is really helpful. There will be times at work where you start there going. Like, what am I doing here? I could have been at home, I could have been revising open up your phone and either do some questions, go through your notes. Anything that can give you the edge, give you a little bit of extra time and sleep. Well, I think that's really important to just, just make sure that you sleep a lot. And then the next question is sorry, Doctor Moira, I didn't get the question answer to my question earlier. I have a published radiology related case report article. As the first author. Will it get three points for publication or only one point? Because it is a case report earlier on to 2023 case reports were getting three points. But at this uh round of cycle, they had reduced it to one point because it is a case report and only uh publications above the level of case reports get three points. So that's done. And then Catherine ask, can the September 2024 M sra results be used for used for the upcoming round of radiology application? Um UN un. Unfortunately not because the September application I think opens only for GP psychiatry anesthesia and O BG if there are sees. And uh generally, uh radiology hasn't been read in September at least for last year. So I don't think we could use that score. And can you let us know when the, when we get the recording. Well, once we finish the session today or tomorrow, you should be having the recording and any ideas for leadership role, that's easy to do. I'm struggling in that domain the most. Um Let's go back to the presentation uh so that we can speak about the leadership roles. Um share. OK. So it's a pigmentation. Yeah. So in leadership role, so one of the ways is national Radiology, leadership role is going to be hard, getting those seven points is uh going to be hard. And at this point, it might even be not counted because uh uh we need six months of the uh we need to be six months in the leadership role for it to be counted towards your uh uh towards your points. But uh again, uh national health care or local regional Radiology, uh national health care rules are not that hard to get and there are five points for that BPU currently has openings for committee applications if you're interested. Um So uh B UPM or any other um uh any other national organizations where you can exercise a role, even if it is not relevant to radiology would get you five points. So that's something we could, you could aim for and other committee applications that's currently open. I'm not quite sure of society of radiologist trainings, applications are still open, but you could have a look there and widening participation of Medics Network, we always look for uh look for we welcoming additional members. We do have leadership roles open. So you could also check their Instagram or uh their website. So I'm gonna jot that down here for you. So you could uh have a look um RD I RJ. Uh I had juniors. We've just finished uh recruiting for uh this committee. So II am not quite sure if there's any opportunities there. So, uh that's about a leadership just on the leadership part. I think if you're a candidate who is applying for the uh January 2025 or the M SA slot, I think it's better, you focus on MSA prep rather than the leadership because you, even if you get the national leadership at this point, it's not going to come to your application. Now, you need to be in this for six months and the evidence also need to suggest that you were in there for six months. So I think your time would be better focused if you're preparing for M SRA. But if you are someone who's gonna apply for the 2026 intake, then obviously, like said, you can look into these organizations and you can think about leaderships. OK, then ask, how did you guys can, I can I just chime in on the leadership? So um leadership doesn't always have to be super complicated. So obviously, you know, and right, six months is not the time you have anymore. So I would say forget about it for now. Uh But, you know, if you find yourself in a position where you need to apply again, the leadership role that I did, I had a bigger one, but I did have a second one because my bigger one was in India and I wasn't sure if that was going to count and getting the evidence was a bit dicey. I had to contact people and stuff but find out a problem that is unique to your local, regional or national level. Ok. What is the issue? Find out if there's a slot where they're looking for someone, even if there's no advertised post and then contact the key people. The idea is you don't want to generate work for anybody. If you off come to somebody with a proposal where they have to do something to help you, your chances are lesser than if they just have to say yes, maybe give you a letter if you do all the leg work. So what I did was I was an IMT and we had a horrible teaching program. It was big. We went up to a level and the trust got reprimanded. I'm not going to go into that, but there was no teaching and then there was barely people could attend. So what I did was I spoke to the education department. I said, why don't you have teaching? And they said, well, we ask consultants and nobody has the time. So I said, ok, if I find people to teach, um and I get them to come in, will you give me a place for them to teach? And they said, yeah, sure. So then I went to the training director like the education lead of the hospital and I said, look, I want to start this thing. Can I organize this teaching? Is it approved by you? And they said yes, OK. Yeah, you can. That's not a problem because there's no work for them. They were like if you want to go for it, speak to this education person, she'll get you a room. So I got a room. Then I went to the radio department and I spoke to registrars and consultants and said, how many of you are looking for? Teaching observations? Because teaching observation is something you need for radiology, your your portfolio. Many of them are like, yeah, I'd love to teach somebody something. It's fine. So then I said, OK, teach them about chest x rays, abdomens, abdominal x-rays, basic ct head, ct, all that stuff, little, little things that are useful for anybody. Then I went and put posters across the hospital saying there's teaching happening. Here's a QR code sign up if you want to, I'll give you all certificates and you can all give feedback and this will all come towards your official portfolio needs. And then the slots that were for teaching filled them with this I did this, you know, for the time I was there and I also opened up the application to everybody. I sent it to all the groups that I knew. I said anybody wants to attend some Bejing, I'll get you a certificate attended. Ok. So people attended from all over the country and people attended from other countries as well. And as long as they had submitted to me, which, where they are attending from, this became a, a leadership role and a teaching role that was international. And um nobody that I involved had to do any extra work. The slots were already there. The recording was easy, you could do it on teams with a laptop. And uh in the end, all I wanted was a certificate from all of them saying that I organized this because they were more than happy I drafted out a letter I sent it to them. I said I just need your signature. And so, you know, if you're finding it difficult or if the work is too much, all you need to do is be a little creative about it and identify an area where you could contribute value and it doesn't generate work for other people. And I think that is a good way to get a role because an international leadership role just needs to mean that you're doing something on an international level. Somebody can join a call from your university group, somebody can join a call. From another country off a Facebook off a whatsapp from Nigeria, from India, from Pakistan, wherever have you. It's an international teaching session and interpret everything in the portfolio in the most, in the way that is the most convenient to you that requires the least amount of effort from you to get you the most response. But that's my Yeah. Yeah, completely agreed with Vishal earlier. Also, there was this um, question on how to organize teaching sessions and how do we maximize our points there. So exactly the way Vishal uh jotted it down. That's exactly what Vishal did. That's exactly what me and Gautam did and that's the way to actually go about it. Look. Uh, there would be teaching deficiencies, of course, in any NHS. Trust. You just need to take a good look at which department is running through the deficiencies. What we personally did as we are international medical graduates. We are coming into a new system in NHS and we felt on, uh, people weren't enough acquited on when they are coming into work. What do they do on their first day off on call? What are the uh responsibilities in each different department? Does anyone actually, uh know and are they coming in with that information? We did a survey, we found out like a lot of people needed help there. And we organized uh teaching sessions on, on call, uh on, on call. We organized an on call series on surgical medical on call, trauma and orthopedic on call. And we ran the session for around three months. Uh We got approval from our uh post graduate education center and we ran it as an international uh international teaching series and uh uh as Michelle said, uh as long as not a lot of work is required from others. As long as you are willing to put in the lesson plan and organize the session by yourself. It should be something you would be able to get and it could also gain you leadership points as uh mentioned. So that answers the last question and then um ok, so how did you guys schedule your remission around your work life? Um So, uh for, for me, I used to uh I uh so uh for uh for me, uh we are all uh full time doctors. So one of the things we used to do is we used to also study at our lunch breaks and at our hospital hours where the, where the shift seems a little free. And once you come back home, you hit the gym or you do uh whatever, whatever hobbies that you have and then you again, start revising 7 to 10 and on off days, we uh me and Gautam have gone 16 hours plus on preparing. So it depends, it depends on different people, different uh ways of preparation. And yeah, a lot of annual leaves. I spent a lot of annual leaves study leaves and even unpaid leaves at times and strike days. And all of that was uh the days we used for preparing and at least one month before the exam, uh make sure that you feel a bit prepared and you start working on your marks. Uh So it will give you, um, it will give you the time and edge and confidence when you're going into the exam that you'd be fine. Uh That, that was my way of preparing and uh Gautham Vishal anything to add. Mm. What I did was I just told myself like I prepared for MSR for six months. I told myself I have to study MS for MSR every single day. It doesn't matter how much I study. So it's like if you wake up, you're gonna brush your teeth, right? So in the same way before I go to sleep that day, I have to add, study some topic. It could be a whole system or it could be two different topics. That's it. That's all I kept as a goal for me. So I made sure every single day before I go to sleep, I'm like, did I study anything today in Emary? Yeah, I studied few topics in respiratory. Ok, I can, I am going to sleep now. So it made sure that I had a tick box for myself. So it may um also gave me the conference that, ok, I am doing something that I told I'm gonna do and I'm doing it daily. I changed it. One, this was when I was studying, I used to do this and when I finished studying and I, when I was only practicing questions and again, I did it, uh I changed it where, OK, every single day I have to do at least 20 clinical questions and 20 S JT questions. And I made sure to do that if I am gonna, like Michelle said, if I'm gonna be on call, I know after 930 I'm not gonna do anything. And before nine o'clock in the morning, I'm waking up 20 minutes before my shift. I'm not gonna have time to do anything. So during my on calls, the good thing about being an F one or F two as a choice, your register will be dying right by your side, but you are not gonna be doing anything. Your register won't have any time to breathe, drink water nothing. And they will even take the time to ask you whether you had your break. But I've never seen any of my registers go on their break and they'll be literally dying near you. You wanna help them but you can't, all you're gonna do is gonna be a liability to them. So all you need to do is stay there, be, go ahead clock your patients. And if you have some time between clocking two patients, you just take and do two questions or three questions it just takes, it's all these apps and all these uh uh resources are already available on your mobile as well. So as like you using your Instagram for the two minutes, you just go into the app and do uh questions in past medicine. I use past medicine and M CQ bank. In past medicine, they have a feature called knowledge tutor. So it does spits you out random questions at random times. So if I think I'm weak in cardiology, I will take cardiology and it will keep giving cardiology questions to me. And whenever I have free time, I'll do two questions here, three questions there because I've already prepped the notes and I've learned through this when I make a mistake. I know why I made a mistake most often. It's because I forgot that there was a double negative in the question or because I forgot the gender or the age when it comes to hypertensive medications, silly mistakes like that. So you get feedback from that. So when you keep your to yourself, that you're gonna study every day, it doesn't matter how much you're gonna study and you're gonna do these questions every day. And it doesn't matter how many questions you're gonna do. You, you train your mind to always be in touch with Emary. I felt. So this is my own experience, right? I felt like if I'm always being in touch with the study material, it was easier for me and if I come back three days later I was making so many silly mistakes which I, you, you didn't use to make and with this was bringing my confidence down, but there were some of my friends who used to do it in a completely different way because that was easier for them. I think you just have to find your own unique style. Yeah, that's what worked for me. Um, yeah, just to add to all the, you know, wonderful points that, um, you know, you guys have put, um, one of the things that was that I still have, I, I'm studying for the C two now and it's the same story it doesn't change is I struggle a lot with, uh, just getting down, just feeling low, um, getting depressed, feeling like it's too much. Um, sitting there one day, like, you know, you might have, you have a friend who's traveling somewhere and was like, oh, I had a great trip or you have other goals in life that you're not able to focus on. Um, you know, and you just sit and wonder, like, am I, am I even doing the right thing or you open a book and you write a topic and you go back to it and like, damn it, I got it wrong again. Um, so I think it's always important to take care of yourself and to not be too hard on yourself. Um, which is why I used to go by a weekly I, one of the things that you know, II like to always remind myself is, you know, how, how do you eat an elephant? You cut it into small pieces and then you eat, sorry for the graphic image. But um that's, that's how you do it. You build a wall brick by brick. So just focus on what you're doing at the time and try and put all your focus into that. Don't be too hard on yourself. There'll always be days where nothing goes your way, things go wrong. You feel like you're drowning, you don't know what's going on. It feels impossible. Um It's really important to understand and accept that that is normal. Everybody who preps for any exam always goes through this. Um And, and what's important in that time is you don't let that work against you just, just keep going and just keep, you know, just keep, keep, keep trying and, and like I said, every, like you guys can see, everybody has a, has their own unique way of, of doing things. Um And, and that's what I would suggest and, and I actually agree, I agree with both a lot that like, don't get yourself out of the exam mindset. Don't say today, I'm going to go and just forget about it. You know, you take a break, but you take a very calculated break in the sense that you're taking this to take your mind. Off of it to relax but not like uh you know what I did a, I did a walk today and I'm scoring 30% it three weeks to the exam. This is, this is impossible. You never know what happens. And you will always regret not putting in enough effort. If you put in 100% and you fail, it doesn't hurt as bad as it does when you know that there was a lot more you could have done, but you just didn't do it, you know. So I think that's really important, be kind to yourself, be understanding of yourself and and don't take it personally when bad days happen because that's perfectly normal. Thanks. Thanks Michelle. Then we have Pria tasking. Can I discuss my E portfolio with someone, please? Um This session is a group session so it wouldn't be appropriate yet to discuss e portfolio separately for uh someone. But however, you could email us or uh approach us through our emails and we could probably look into if we can arrange something like that. And Jessica, could you please send the link to that here? Um I'm not sure which link you're speaking about. If you can mention it again, we'll look into that. William says, bye uh says, can you please mention the S GT book name again in addition to the Oxford S TT book. So the Oxford S TT assess and progress, situational judgment test. That's the name of the book. Um I will look up a link for the book and I would uh try and send that and then we put in our feedback form, please, everyone do fill the feedback form. So we know how to make ourselves better in the next uh session. If we host one, how much uh Jessica asks, how much time did you spend to prepare for the interview? I would say the day we got to know that we have interviews from that day to the day of the interview, which would be like 1.5 months. That was me. Um I think for uh Gautam, it was a bit lesser 20 days, I think. And uh uh um no, exactly the same. Don't worry about interviews until you're in the situation. You have to take an interview. Don't break your head over what I'm gonna do. What are the questions? What is the pattern? That's not your problem right now. Portfolio, get that in hand and start prepping for M sra. Once you have those two things, you'll get, you'll get enough time to prep for the interview. So just the time you have in between the day you get your results and the day you have your interview is, is planned. I definitely agree with the and then I shall ask, what's the difference between academic and clinical radiology, ST one posts? Um Anyone taking this? Um Yeah. Yeah. So it's literally um so an academic uh ST one post is like the name suggests your OTA is not going to be full time clinical radiology. So they'll be split. So, um, I know a couple of academic trainees so they might have an 8020 split or if you're even more inclined to 6040 but usually it's 8020 where 80%. So four days a week, you're going to be doing the exact same thing that clinical radiology trainees are doing one day a week, you're going to have a completely different life where you are either doing if you're doing at, you know, a teaching thing or if you're doing research, you're gonna be spending that one day, you'll have a supervisor for your academic side of things and whether you're doing, you know, some sort of research or you're doing some sort of study, you're gonna be working on that. That's the only difference. So it's not a purely clinical job, which is why the name is usually in the person's specifications. They describe it quite well as to exactly what the job entails. And then there's a level of flexibility that um that is given and your rotation will also have a little more of an, you know, academic orientation. So there will be some university or some department that you will be affiliated with that, that 20% of your time you're going to spend with them. And then Moni is here with some good joke. How do you all know about this stuff. I don't even remember what I had what I had for breakfast today. Yeah, like we, I'll say PTD and then we have mahesh asking, may I know the domain regarding showing commitment to radiotherapy in placements outside UK is accepted like work exposure under radiology residents and learning about how reporting is done and attending teaching sessions. Um I'm quite not catching the question here. Mahesh, if you can type it again, we'll go through the next questions and then attend to your question. Then Jessica asked, how could you outline the major milestones in your journey? Like when you completed your M BBS GMC registration FY application and stuff? So in the beginning of my presentation, I did give an overview. I uh completed my M BBS at uh 2019 with internship done GMC registration took another two years due to COVID. And then I started as a trust play as a show at 2022 and still remaining in the same post. And I decided I want to pursue radiology when I started when I did my clinical attachment and I was given a posting in radiology during my clinical attachment. And then I went to my supervisor, I told him I'm really interested in radiology. Do you think I could uh get a placement? My trust was accommodative enough to give me a placement in clinical radiology. And from then on, like I worked through my audits, the portfolio and everything else for the next uh nine months. And I had put in my first application this time 2024. And um you know, given that we had the standard timeline set for both me and Gautam, we uh had this uh how to prepare, this is the time we are going to do this and we had this timeline behind. So, uh it all went uh well, fingers crossed and we got in with our first uh uh for the first try. And Avis had also mentioned about his journey and his presentation. So uh probably we could send you the slides if you guys need and you could look through that and again with jokes and just need uh well, teaching experience from India school full marks. Uh Basically, there are a few colleagues of mine that had uh given teaching experience from abroad and it did get marks as long as it follows the standard template of uh evidence submission for um teaching experience. So make sure that every word that's mentioned in the portfolio is also there in your uh letter and it should be, it should be gaining the marks as required as long as it was national teaching and not regional teaching. You should be getting full marks. And Ariba asks if you're a member of events team on W PM and it counts in leadership. It does count in leadership. But how many points you get? Depends on your role So if you're a member of events team that's promoting events of radiology, you might get higher uh points than a member of events team that's promoting teaching in the events team. So depends really on what your job specification is, but it should give you some points in leadership. And for S GT, you mentioned Oxford S GT book and he was there a second book you mentioned, Vsel. No, no, I think the explanations in all your question banks. Um The the box that you'll find on the H EU website. Um And uh that book is, is will keep you occupied. I don't think you need at least II don't know of another another. Yeah, II agree to as well. Like uh Oxford ST was pretty good and the only other resource I would trust with SAT is uh the papers from he itself and going through that, that did release a course on at preparation last year, which was quite nice. And there's also a youtube series uh by I MG Marvels which gives a little insight into S JT and they uh give points on how you can solve questions which I found useful. So these are things you could look into if you're interested. And what are the personal experiences of best resources for M sra? We have discussed this again and again over and over today past medicine M CQ Bank, Samson Question Bank. And uh e uh I'm not quite sure about E Medica, I did not do E Medica. And um other than that past test, these are the available uh question banks in the market. You can have your pick and this is turning out to be a very informal sessions. Um 00, really motivates me. Thank you. Thank you. You lift up our spirit as well and we shall put a link for the Oxburgh S JD and send the mail, please. Thank you loads for the detailed presentation. Uh radiology presentation, uh placement done outside the UK can be claimed as uh points. I II would really, I would really think like radiology uh radiology placement done within UK sh uh should be our target because we need to know what happens in the UK in the radiology placement rather than outside. But if you had done a placement outside and that's the only way you could claim points, you could try, but I am not quite sure if that would gain uh points as a taste a week or points as a placement, Gautam vs any inputs. I think it comes down to the discussion of the assessor. So um when you have the exact description of the taste a week, the clinical experience bit on your presentation. Can you put that up again if that's OK. Uh I have the clinic uh I put this up so uh one second the screen share. So, yeah, um I've, I've got it up um on our website that my friend doesn't read actually. Um, but basically, um, so exposure, it says that it has to be, um, you know, time spent in a radiology department. I mean, you know, please bring that up as well because just because I always uh interpret these by, um, it's based on exactly what is written. Those, those like that, that, that page that she shared is like the key thing that you go off of. So if if you read it, it says a significant exposure means a period of at least three whole day equivalent time attached to clinical radiology department. They given examples, multiple exposures must be meaningly different meaning that you have to show that you've done different things. And then more than like example MDT attendance radiology based list and then evidence can be like a confirming placement official, university department, documents details of a project and course conference certificate. So nowhere in this official document, does it say it has to be within the United Kingdom? So the the short answer to your question is yes, you have attended a radiology department. It will count but the long answer is gonna depend on the discussion of the person. So is it an exposure to the radiology department? Yes, but the question comes in, is it a significant exposure? And that is where your documentation will, will matter? So if you have a letter and that letter has you know, a nice template that says he attended the department from this time to this time each day was this long. Um, he did these activities, like attended an MDT or attended an interventional list or shadowed someone doing a CT list or, you know, an ultrasound list or fluoroscopy list or whatever, each thing is nicely detailed, then that will count. But if it is just this person was in the radiology department, from this date to this date, you're in a gray area there, the guy who reads it or the, you know, the person who reads it may or may not decide to accept that. Um and you can obviously, you know, protest it or contest it, but you're, you're going to dicey situation. So yes, you can use it, but it's got to be like your documentation for it has to be really good and like, you know, have a phone number in all the um letters that you give and an email address. So sometimes they might be unsure of something. The people who are assessing your, you know, documents are also people. So, you know, they might see something and they're like, oh, I'm not sure they want to give you the points. Nobody wants to take your points away from you. So they might just email the person who's written the letter and if that person can respond, then you're good. So just those little, little things can make your obviously, if you hire it from the UK, it's much easier. But if that's not an option for you, then you can still make it happen. And uh then we have uh questions from Ariba. Does it give you five points as it is on national level? Again? Uh It depends on what your role exactly is in, within the events team. And I would, I would uh presume that a role from W PM and with the events should give you five points, but I'm not sure about your particular role. So we could probably discuss it in WPM forum and uh Jessica. That's thank you. Thank you, Jessica. And I was meaning to ask for the link for broadcast for S GT and interview prep. I've uh um I posted the youtube videos for S JT that I used and also broadcast you just, it's broadcast dot dot co.uk, you can just go into their website and you'll have all the resources that they have for preparation, which are all wonderful and uh will be very useful quite a bit expensive. And thank you guys, it was really helpful. Can you please tell me what role does portfolio play? Like the M SRA is the main bit and then portfolios for ranking, right? So M Sra is, as Michelle said, the gateway for radiology, you get your M SRA score, but really like a score of 555 and above was the initial cut off this year and me, uh my score was somewhere around 560 there is uh my colleague who has a score of 619 603 really did not make a difference when uh the ranking came out because MSR was scored at 20% this year. And uh uh we really did not have much of a difference in marks uh when uh when the the final ranking bit uh and then portfolios for ranking, right? No portfolio uh costs about 30% of your entire scoring. So it would be uh this time around they increase the weightage for portfolio uh from 2020 to 30%. So um I would say portfolio was sort of the main key player for me to get my preferred choice of Dery because my M Sary score wasn't, wasn't the highest. At the same time, my interview, uh my interview did not go as well as I expected. So my portfolio did help uh secure a better rank and also secure my my choice for of Deanery. So portfolio is a bit important as well, maybe aiming a score of 35 and above 145 would uh give you a good edge uh to get your preferred role and preferred Deanery. I had one of my friends uh who had an excellent EMSA score uh but his uh portfolio uh he wasn't preparing for radiology as such. It was a second option and portfolio wasn't uh optimum and an interview went OK. So at the end of it, he could not secure a radiology training post. So, uh I wouldn't say like to leave portfolio completely off, do, do uh focus a bit on it, maybe have a score of 35 and above or 30 above. So you can, you can have a safe bet. Uh any, anything to add. Vis no, II agree completely and, and II didn't know that the weight is, has changed like this in my time. It was 30 30 30. Um But yeah, it's exactly like you said, it's all about prioritizing what's unique to your situation. If you already have 35 points on the portfolio or 40 points or whatever, and your only way of getting more points is then to go to a six month long leadership course or a publication, then the amount of time it's gonna take for you to do that publication is not worth it. But let's say you have a portfolio score of 10 or 15, then that is something you need to work on because that is, that is too low. So, and then if you have a score of 15, there's a very high likelihood that there's lots of things, little things, quick, things that you could do um that will quickly boost your score. So it varies from person to person. Um And then, you know, even if suppose your interview scores, I mean, your portfolio score, MSR score is not that good, the game is not over because you could smash your interview do really well and you still you're still getting because 3020 means 50% is uh interview. So it, what role does the portfolio play exactly? Like you said, it's 20% of your score. Um And then beyond that, it depends like how is the rest of your application looking? Yeah. And uh also um very few points in portfolio good M sra score, chance to secure an interview. Definitely you would secure an interview because uh the port uh portfolio scoring is uh comes se separately differently at the end of uh your entire application. And they do not look at the portfolio to give you an interview. You get a an interview invite based on your MSR score. Uh But what do you have to offer on the interview? What do you have to say on the interview? Depends on your portfolio. White space questions are going to come um uh very relevant to your portfolio. What have you done towards radiology? Show us your commitment to radiology and all of that. So uh it's so you could have few points but you could still work on those points. So so that you can talk a bit on the interview about your commitment. And then uh if I had two taste a weeks, one in a trauma center, another in DGH both in diagnostic and interventional radiology. Does it count as two taste a weeks? So yes, it does count as two days a weeks because it would be at two different set up if the trauma center is tertiary and uh you have another district general hospital, this would give the highest qualifer for uh taste a week and you will be getting 10 points. But um you've said that you have both in diagnostic and interventional radiology. If I were you, I would uh split one experience as just diagnostic and the other experience as just interventional. So that uh the uh it is exactly as they asked for in the portfolio like uh uh uh for uh maximizing the points you could get. I would also add uh lines on whether I attended MDT S, whether I went for one stop breast clinics or uh did I do any fluoroscopy list? Did I shadow an intervention radiology? What procedures? I saw those lines? If you did add up in your evidence, it uh does make it easier for someone assessing your evidence to mark you uh to mark you a finer. Yeah. And I OK. So that is the end of Q and A and we have actually exceeded the time we had scheduled for. Thank you, everyone for attending. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you Gautam for taking your time out on Saturday for us to do this session. And uh thank you audience for being so so interactive and also supporting us with our session and do give us feedback so that we could work further on our sessions and if you had any further questions, you could email Ir Juniors RCR Rare. My email is this and Aya Junior's email, I'll put that up on the chat box and Vishal had provided us with his email and his presentation. So you could also email Vishal if you had any questions on his presentation is at gmail.com com. So, uh that would be the end of the session. Thank you all for attending. Thank you. See you all soon. See you on the other side. Bye, best of luck, everyone. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you guys. Thank you. Right.