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Hello. I think we're live now. Should we take off? Yeah. Yeah, great. Um Hi. Uh welcome to our session, everyone. Uh So today we're gonna be talking about White Space questions. Um So it's gonna be me Olivia. Uh I'm from uh TM and then we have uh men and I don't, they would, then they can probably introduce themselves as they go on them. Um But yeah, we're gonna be taking a session today and then at the end there'll be time for questions as well. Uh So just a quick intro slide. Uh This is just a recap on our timeline for all the sessions we'll be doing. So we've had our first one already and the next one will be on the 19th of September and that will be about sort of the personal stations and academic plans. So again, another quick recap. So we have the timeline here of the actual SAP application process. Um This is more for your own sort of benefit just to give you a quick recap because some of these deadlines come around quite fast. Uh So already a bit in September anyway, so we have the academic application deadline um and then you ran all of your SFP jobs and then obviously the interviews offers and then the rest of the other sort of the national programs and the foundation priority. Uh but just keep an eye out for these because they do come around quite fast. Obviously, you've just started medical school probably this year. So it's quite a lot going on, but just keep an eye on these, um you'll have these slides afterwards that'll be on me. Um And again, just for your reference, these are just some of the key changes um because it's quite confusing um like all the different deaneries and all the different changes to keep up with from last year. Um As you may be aware, so reasonable adjustment, um There's a form that you need to fill out and just to look into that too because that has different deadlines. Um One of the key things again, you might know is the EP MS S schools, they won't be included uh similar to the sort of national ranking program, it just won't be included in there. And another key thing is that, so I know the London schools, they won't be using stuff like presentations part of their um sort of banking system. So previously you get points for those kind of things like National International sort of presentations uh but not this year. But today we're just gonna be focusing on the white face questions and how to do them. Um So just sort of in terms of preparation advice, uh you sort of bring up the whole slide. Um So it's quite important because all the questions quite similar, just make sure you read the question correctly and to write down all your ideas, but make sure you're definitely answering the question because by the time you write down all your skills and all of the things you're allocating that to you only get quite small about about 202 100 words per question. So it's quite, you need to be quite concise with your answers. So just make sure you've actually answered whatever it is. And we're gonna go through some examples as we go through about how best to answer all of the different questions. Um So just taking into account all the sort of stuff you have from medical school, so again, we're gonna break down all the questions uh but just making sure you're sort of allocating key skills which you want to sort of portray and we have a key sort of word slide later. So sort of key skills, you have experiences, you have to show those things and then um what you will gain from the SFP and what you would bring to the SFP. And I think that's some of the key things you're sort of wanting to get part for all of these different questions. So as well as answering the question correctly, you need to make sure you're sort of portraying yourself in the way you want to portray yourself and getting all the things you want to get out there within like such a small amount of work. Um And again, as I was saying, it's confusing, it's for the different deer, they have different requirements. So I think what's best to do is to go on to the specifications and just have a look and go on to the website of your dear and see what they actually want because they may list sort of very specific things about things they offer. So whatever you're going to sort of research, teaching, try and find out what your deary offers in that sort of environment. Um And also what they're looking for from your application. Um And then just sort of, and again, as I was saying, because like the questions quite short, maybe it's best to just write out your questions, say everything you want to say and then you can cut that down and cut that down and keep doing different drafts and then maybe get sort of a family member or like one of your friends just to look it over just to make sure some sort of something you're happy with. Um So approach to writing, so you can bring up the whole slide again. Um But do you want me to quickly do this one? Because no, yeah, just introduce myself as well. So my name is um obviously an F one as well. Um I'm in Norwich and I'm working with the ENT group there, which is why I chose to apply there. Um So thinking about this slide, so how to actually approach the writing? I thought we'd put this in because um for being in your position at the moment and everything might be up in the air and you might not know how to actually go about things. So I think if you just stick to this structure, um you will get most of it done in no time. So again, as Olivia already mentioned the person specification, so go through that and just highlight some of those key skills because if you just stick to those, slot those in to your answers, you're already going to have a strong answer there. The academic coen, I'm going, I'm going to explain that in a bit more depth a bit later, but that's essentially a document you can find on the UK FP website as well. And again, I would just go through and highlight some of the key skills, but in that document, it actually breaks it down into research, management, leadership and education. So the three possible branches er for knowledge specifically, it's obviously only going to be research, but it essentially breaks down, it breaks it down into a lot of the key skills that you need for research. And again, just trying to throw those in if you've had those relevant experiences in the past research, your deaneries inside out. I can't stress this enough. So personally, what I did was I got in touch with people from those deaneries. So I hassle them. I contacted them on linkedin Twitter. And eventually I had a couple of people from each place who were just willing to have a quick 10, 15 minute phone call with me. I basically just asked them some of the ins and outs of some things that other people might not know. So when it came to the White Space questions or it came to an interview, I could actually show things or show that I've gone out of my way to find out more about that Deery that that would make you stand out. Ok. So that's really important. And for somewhere like Norwich, for example, um, Norwich offers the opportunity to be an honorary tutor in your second year for PV R lessons. And so again, that's one of those things that I found up before. So even though I was applying for the research branch, I tried to throw some education things as well in my answers, knowing that that was something I could potentially discuss in the interview if I got to that stage. So just find people. You're, you're welcome to contact us as well and have to have a phone call with anyone and we can discuss some of those things in more depth. So preparing your portfolio is really important. So I think the first, after you've done those first couple of things, just sit down and break your portfolio down into these three or four different sections. So research, teaching leadership teamwork, once you have that then just go through and actually rank them because at the end of the day, you have five questions, each of which you can only write 200 words. So it's really not that much. It might seem like a lot, but it's really not. And you'll find that when you're writing your answers and we'll go through some examples that we have as well, there's not very much you can write. So ranking them allows you to actually by the end of it, ensure that you have the key um experiences and skills that you want to put across. OK? And the last one in terms of preparation, again, really important, find the relevant supervisors, you know, people that you've met along the way, perhaps people you've worked with on previous uh research projects, just get in touch with them from early and find a time when they would be willing to actually sit down, go through your answers and give you some feedback. Because at the end of the day, if they're on the research pathway themselves, they've done this many times at various stages of the research path. So they know what a good answer entails. So if you find them and you have a fi your own uh first couple of drafts after which you send it to them, then that'll really hone down on to an answer that, uh, you'd be happy to submit, writing it. Can't stress this enough, just write it. Ok. And this just goes with research in general. The best advice I've ever got was write when you're drunk and correct when you're sober after, obviously, you don't actually have to get drunk. But the point there is just write with that thing and just get it all onto paper. So even if you end up writing like 506 100 words, that's fine. Ok, just get onto paper. And then that way, what you'll find is everything's on the page and you'll be able to just kind of slot them into different questions perhaps wherever you think it fits best, just get it all into the, the answers in a written format. Take a few days break, come back to it and make revisions. So I would say write it up to yourself, come back, make revisions, try and get it down to around 300 or 250 each question. So you've done one draft yourself and then you can start sending it out to people that, you know, like your seniors or supervisors don't send it to too many people at once. So the same draft of too many people because they're all going to have um conflicting ideas. So I would just start by sending it to a couple of people and the people who you really think are going to have the best revisions. I would leave them to the very end because they can really just uh help to sharpen things up as I mentioned, send it to others to proof. Um And just in terms of writing advice, I think there's two things that really shape a good answer here. Firstly, the content and secondly, the way you actually go about writing it. So if we break down the content, um and we'll discuss this a bit further in terms of a, a good structure that you can stick to, but starting with achievements and experiences. Um So again, if you have that all down in your portfolio, uh that'll be quite easy to just internet. Again, the skills obtained are really important and, and I will go into a bit more depth, the sorts of things that you can actually outline there, meet the person specification and the academic compendium if you can. Um And again, we will discuss that in a bit more depth, just be really specific because at the end of the day, you'll make you're writing an answer about yourself. So make sure your experiences are specific what you actually want from the SFP specific the things where you think your weaknesses might be or things that you want to learn from the SFP um and your uh your academic plan in 5, 10 years in the future, it's always good to write something about that, which we'll discuss again later, but just make sure it's really specific to you. So writing the style is obviously going to be important. Everyone's going to have their own style. But I think generally for everyone, there's going to be overlap in terms of just keeping it really succinct. Get rid of the, the extra fit of words. Don't make it too airy fair. You don't need to use crazy adjectives, just get your points across because at the end of the day, you only have 200 words. Make, make sure you have evidence throughout. Don't say you're this amazing person who has these amazing skills without actually backing it up. Keep a good structure, organize the points and we'll look at some examples later for that. Uh and last but not least uh the rule of three as well. So if you have skills that you want to put out there, maybe listing them as a rule of three might be a good way of doing it. Um And I'll show you some examples later. Also. Apologies, Olivia, I realized that I was, I just did your slide but we'll move on. Sorry. Um The you, there's also the star structure as well. I'm sure you've either heard about it already or you're going to hear about it, loads going into the sop prep, but start starting with situation. So just set the scene, make it really brief. So just a very short sentence, the task. So what was the problem? So co some answers that you might want to put down uh ones where you have a problem and then you're the hero, you come in and you save the day and you discuss that and then you just um and then you discuss some of the skills or the achievements that you then gone got from that. So that's quite a classic answer you can give. So again, just out like that, outline the task in a very brief sentence, the action, how do you actually go about finding a solution or saving the day and the result? And I think this is the most important part alongside the reflection. So the result of this might be, you know, the skills or the actual achievements that you got from it. So it might be some sort of publication output like a presentation. And then after that, just always, always bring it back to the SFP and it's really important. So highlight why it makes you a really strong candidate uh going into the SFP. Um And just how the the result or the outcome essentially fits in with your plans going forward into the future as well in the academic pathway. Hi, so just to quickly introduce myself, I'm a Maya, I'm an F one working in Colorectal in the North and Norwich. I'm also involved in the ent group like me and um today I'm just going to chat a little bit about general buzzwords and qualities. So, um but like men were saying in the previous slide, anything that you mentioned in terms of qualities and um skills that you have learned have to be linked back to why that would make you a good candidate to be, to being an SFP doctor. So we can break them down into different types of qualities. Although in the end, they kind of overlap. Um, But think about when you're writing about your research experiences, the education experiences or um how you've been a good leader or a good team member about whether you've developed some personal qualities such as being hard, working, friendly, enthusiastic, resilient, committed or ambitious. So I've thrown some in there, but like I said, a lot of them kind of overlap. Um and then we can kind of break them down as well into clinical. So skills that are good to have as a clinician. So being focused, being able to work under pressure, being adaptable, being a multitasker and being in control in potentially negative situations. So these are good skills to have. If you have like an acutely unwell patient, you're doing a clinical task like day to day. Um And it's very important to highlight how you are good clinically when applying to the SFP. Because in the SFP, you're also going to be to be doing academic work on the side. So it's important that you're clinically strong um academic qualities So being organized, being a good team member, having good analytical skills, being a good communicator and a lateral thinker. So those are some other qualities that you could use relating to academia and in terms of teaching qualities, good presentation skills, um adapting your presentations and your communication style to your audience. Being approachable, patient, flexible, supportive and being a good listener. So yeah, these kind of overlap and then team work effective communication, active listening initiative, understanding the role of everybody in the team being driven by the team's overall goal, being a good listener, supportive of others, flexibility and ability to compromise. So try and draw up on some of those qualities when writing your answers. And then these are some quite good verbs to use as well in your answers in terms of um how an experience has helped you develop a certain skill. Um So you can say like, yeah, um this experience has helped me to um help me to gain more confidence or um yeah, so basically, you can use these verbs before one of the qualities that you have achieved. Um So just to quickly jump in, so I've put the academic compendium here. So this is what the document would look like. There's also just a summary of some of the key skills. But as I'll go through in our examples as well, I really made a focus of trying to implement these as much as possible because ultimately, if you can show off that you have these research skills already. Then you can really uh discuss some more interesting skills that you would like to develop in your SFB as opposed to. Oh, I want to do ethical approval. If you've done all of that, then great try and put it in and it really does help you stand out. And I think especially for your year because you only have a total of five questions of which three of them are related either to your uh research experience or to towards why you want to do research, either the SOP or just research in general. So there's three questions. So it's going to be quite research heavy. So if you have these experiences really try to get them in. Um So there's just some questions here. So these are the five questions we'll break them down individually. But if you guys just wanted our slides after we thought we just put them here just so it's in one place, but we'll discuss them one by one now. So the first question that um you got this year is on about your career goals. So the question is, what are your specific reasons for applying for an SFP? Please highlight how the program will contribute to your career plans and briefly outline these. Um So these are some kind of bullet points of things that I have I included in my answer and I think are good, are good points but obviously like, I'm sure you will come up with your own as well. But a common one is to be able to combine academia with clinical practice because you will most likely be doing academic projects on the side, like during your F one part of your F two. And then you also have a dedicated academic do in your F two. And this could be a stepping stone to go down to going down the academic clinical fellowship route later on or perhaps doing a clinical lectureship. And I think it's quite, it's quite good to mention the specific like terms of like the next step of the AC F and the clinical lectureship as well because it shows that, you know, kind of where you're going or where this could lead to, it doesn't have to lead there. But I feel like it's quite good if you say that in in the interview as well. Um If you get asked um then to improve your research skills and also be able to use evidence based medicine in the future. So you might want to in the future, develop your own clinical trials. Um And just in general, knowing how to critique a research paper is very useful as a doctor as well to um understand best evidence based medicine as well to provide the best care for your patients. So you can mention that um Yeah, I'm taking part in clinical trials in the future. Um Then I think it's also important to mention a specific specialty that you're interested in. You may not know what you want to do in the future, specialty wise. But if there's any specific specialty that you're interested in and that you'd like to do research in, definitely mention that in your White Space questions, especially if that's one that's offered by Norwich. So for example, I'm interested in NT and I'm involved in that research group. So it might be worth mentioning that as well that you are interested in. Nt, so you'd like to do this program because it offers the opportunity. And um yeah, so again, doing this academic program can then lead to perhaps doing a phd in the future, becoming a clinical lecturer. So that's something as well that you can mention. So here are some examples of about how we would answer this question. So this is the one that I wrote last year. So I said, I believe the academic SFP is a unique opportunity to have dedicated protected time to conduct my own research project. I enjoyed the research I did during my INTER BS C year and I would like to gain more experience and skills in academia. The research based SFP could be a stepping stone for a career in academic medicine and could equip me with the skills to pursue an academic clinical Fellowship in the future. I'm interested in exploring a career in academic medicine because I believe that combining research and clinical practice ensures the provision of evidence based medical care. Moreover, I believe that the SFP would also provide me with the necessary skills to understand and interpret evidence as a doctor, making sure that I deliver good practice based on the best reliable evidence. I am particularly interested in ent a rotation available via SSP and one that I would be keen to do research in. So things that I have highlighted for this answer, I might research experience, I know it doesn't specifically ask you what your research experience is. And there's a separate question for that, but I think it might be good to mention it, especially if that has kind of sparked an interest in research. So in my case, when I do my year that made me think that I wanted to do more research in the future. So you can mention that. Um And then again, just mentioning about evidence based medical care because even if you don't go down the A CF or clinical lectureship route, it's still important to be able to uh provide evidence based medical care in learning specialty. Um Yeah. And then we've got another example that um me has written. So I'll just hand over to me to explain that one. Thank you. So I'll just go through my one as well. Um So academically, I wish to further explore my passion for research which was shown during my integrated BS C in anesthetics and critical care at Imperial College London, in which I obtained a first class degree. So again, my thinking similar to Myers was trying to show where that interest actually started. And it's also a good way of just throwing in an achievement as well. So getting a first class degree um in A BS C. So moving on, I grew an appreciation for how research presents the unique opportunity to bridge gaps in medical knowledge and refine current clinical guidelines through patient and public involvement. So it's always good to show some of those benefits of research and highlighting that in your answer and showing that you have an appreciation for that again, just uh emphasizes your motivation going forward as well. Moving on the SFP offers protected research, time, mentorship opportunities and teaching sessions to build upon my existing research skills. So what can I actually benefit from the SFP going forward? I will aim to network with other researchers from whom I will be able to learn how to structure research questions, complete ethical approval forms and disseminate my research findings through publications and conferences. So I appreciate that this is probably quite vague. I did say keep it specific. Er but for me, I felt like in this answer, I just wanted to really highlight that I do have that appreciation for research and I have an appreciation for what the SFP can offer after which I then go into some specifics about myself. So to move on the clinical rotations in particular oology will nurture my aspirations of becoming a leading clinician. So as we discussed, it's always good to talk about research which really highlight the fact that you're interested in the clinical side of things as well. Because if you just wanted to do research, you could do that. You don't have to be a clinician on the side as well. Um I've explored my interest in auto andrology by using my free time every week to shadow Mr Salad. And so, so again, just showing my keenness for the specialty overall, the SAP will build the foundation to launch my academic career by providing me with the transferrable skills necessary to apply for an academic clinical fellowship post in Otto laryngology. Uh So with this question, so why you want to apply to the SFP? I think it's almost crucial that you discuss the academic pathway at some point at the end, preferably because it, it makes sense because they don't want someone who's going to do the SFP and just ultimately leave it there because it just implies that you haven't actually got the true motivation for it. So I would even if you're not fully convinced that you will go down the path, but you want to do the SFP to see, you know, if you do potentially want to pursue it, maybe just throw in a little fid there, just say that, you know, you are really keen, you really do want to go down this academic pathway. And that way, um there's no doubt there for the people reading it. This will assist me later in applying for a phd. So again, highlighting that pathway, um this question is like very similar to the previous one because it please explain your rationale for your choice of program. And in Norwich, the only program that we offer is the research one. So essentially, the question is why would you like to apply for the research? SFP? So essentially the answer is going to be very similar to the one before. Um But perhaps here you can focus more on the benefits of research generally. Um But to be fair, it's going to be pretty similar to the previous question. Um Yeah, yeah, I agree. So with my answer, obviously, I had a lot of the benefits of research but also the benefits of SFP. But that was because we were limited by our questions, but because you have why research? And YSFP, um it's quite nice. So you can kind of tailor it uh to SFP in one and then research on the other is in my mention. This is the next question, please outline your previous research experience and achievements. So here try to draw upon any kind of um research experience that you have had. So any academic projects that you've been involved in perhaps on the side, um any systematic reviews that you have done men, any previous degrees in degrees and any projects that you have um completed during these as well. Um Then also in the next bullet points, I've also written down some quality improvement projects, audits. Um again, publications presentations, maybe you presented an audit at a conference. Um Any prizes. So for example, I did, I got a prize, I got the RC GP of Northeast London Prize. Um And it was a really easy one to get like some of the prizes. It's just about being opportunistic. So um some medical schools, they've got like SSC like students selected components. So if you do like a project for that, I did that part of my GP project, literally just like a farm volunteering project and like the impact of farming on mental health, something like that. And I have to do it for my GP um rotation anyway. And then I just submitted it to this. So if you can find something that's not too much work or that you've done work on, you have to do anyway for something in your like in your degree. Um and then submit it for a prize and that would be really good as well. Um And then for all of these achievements, it's very important that you don't just mention them and leave them at that, but that you explain what skills you gained from them and what you've learned from them. And then you can go back to the skills that I was talking about before and talk about how those achievements have helped you develop those skills. And also it's also important to link those skills back to being a good foundation doctor and a good SFP doctor in particular. Um Yeah, here are again some examples. So first example during my integrated BSC, I wrote a systematic review on the effects of non surgical interventions on neuromuscular function following traumatic knee injury. And then here I went into a bit more detail. You don't have to give us much detail about the specific project. Perhaps if you've got like multiple projects, you can just briefly outline them. Um I believe the findings of this review have a significant clinical impact if they identify which treatments and interventions which contribute to the greatest improvement in your muscular function, post knee injury, restoration of your muscular function after traumatic knee injury is protective against re injury and the development of musculoskeletal condition. So I've explained the what the relevance of my systematic review was and like, why is it useful for clinical practice? And then in the next paragraph, I explain what I learned from performing that systematically doing that systematic review, conducting and writing up. The systematic review has equipped me with skills such as conducting a systematic search of the literature, performing a risk of bias of randomized controlled trials, data extraction and data analysis. I believe these skills skill, these are skills required to carry out research projects, literature searches and systematic reviews in the future and are transferrable across different fields in medicine. I have also familiarized myself with the Prisma guidelines for systematic reviews which would allow me to evaluate and interpret findings of these to aid my clinical practice as a future doctor. So there I mentioned the Prisma guidelines because that shows that you've definitely done a systematic review properly. Um And then I've highlighted how it's not just useful for me just in case I want to do systematic reviews in the future, but also just as a doctor in general, if I'm going to read systematic reviews, um which are the highest level of evidence um that I'll be able to interpret them. Perfect and then just to quickly go over my one as well. So I'm committed to pursuing a career as an academic clinician displayed by four publications of PUBMED index journals, two as first author, one national oral presentation of five international post presentations. This is an, this is some advice that I got from a couple of ac F doctors. They said with these sorts of things really just throw the numbers in in the first sentence to like if you have it to, you know, if you get in your portfolio, just throw it in there um and just kind of catch their attention off the bat. So to move on, I established a national questionnaire based cross sectional study investigating the association between medical students, sleep hygiene practices and sleep quality across UK universities. I was proactive by formulating a proposal and subsequently approaching Professor Mary Moral to supervise I led on the development of the Imperial College Ethics application which received approval to gain ethical approval at other universities. I recruited 12 local student researchers teaching me valuable skills and leadership and project management. Despite being at the stage of preparing for data collection, I plan to publish potential findings so that universities further promote the importance of sleep quality among students. So the reason I put that, so I haven't actually published that um or I had it at the time, but in terms of where I think I drew the most skills it was in this project. So I could have talked about the ones that I published. But I discussed this with a couple of people and that's why I decided to just throw those publication numbers at the start. But then to actually really go into depth in the project that I learned the most from and where I could really show off my skills the most. And that's the reason I did that. So another thing to mention here, if you have projects pending, then you're very welcome to actually throw those in and they actually really enjoy um reading about them and especially in the interview, you're welcome to talk about them as well. I also have a thorough understanding of conducting reviews. I led a narrative review exploring the efficacy of topical gabapentin in vulvodynia, for which I am first author pending publication. I'm co firsts author of a systematic review meta-analysis investigating the effect of sports related concussion on sleep. So just highlighting some of my review skills uh which is also important as well. Preliminary results for this were presented as opposed to the British Sleep Society conference with a manuscript pending publication. So they aga again, you're just showing some of the achievements um off the back of a project. And I do appreciate at the start that I said, always bring it back to the SFP. But for me bearing in mind, word count as well, I really wanted to throw all of this at. So I didn't have that final sentence saying I believe these skills will mean I'm, I'm I will be placed in good stead to be a SSP candidate going forward. But I felt that I didn't need to for this question because it's quite explicit what those skills are. And again, it's explicit that those skills will be beneficial for the SFP. So I felt like the point might be redundant and given the word count, I just, I, I admitted it in this example. Uh So education and teaching. Uh So I'm also on the research sop like my own them. And I thought I speak a bit about this because it obviously quite important as well. Um So that one, please describe your uh previous teach experience and experience with the teacher within an outside me. Um, I think it's quite important to remember that you're all sort of medical student, medical school is, like, quite busy. There's a lot going on. It doesn't matter if you haven't been, like, I don't know, you haven't done some kind of international teaching or something or same with research. I think it's always good to try and mention things and if you'll start the ideas, just sort of write down all the things you kind of think of on a piece of paper. So whether you've even just watched a teaching session, I been quite inspired and then I don't know, to a group of friends or something up to like major teaching, I think it's always good to just write these things down. So it's more sort of what you gained from them as well. So some sort of stuff I wrote down was like teaching in societies, revision sessions. You've done the STEM sessions, any kind of tutoring, whether that's like tutoring other medical students or, or I don't know, um like other students and other things, any form of mentoring, maybe it's just been a mentor at uni or someone else. And like, it doesn't have to be sort of a big sort of thing which you set up. Sometimes it just has to be something you feel like you've gained experience wrong and you feel like you can show a skill within that same as sort of sports and extracurricular hobbies, that kind of stuff. As long as you can show you've been some kind of educator, some kind of teacher and you forwarded some kind of educational movement. Then I'd say it's worth mentioning these things. Um I was just kind of jotting down random stuff uh just below this here, but just sort of stuff to get you thinking, just try and make you stand out. Like, did you teach different age groups? Were there challenges things you gained? And I think with SP it's important to also recognize the things you didn't gain. Um So you can take them forward. Maybe you did something but you were limited for a certain reason. Maybe you couldn't do what you really want to do because it may resources time, maybe you couldn't reach a certain group of students and then you can sort of turn that into why the SAP and the program you're choosing can help you change those things and help you work more on that in the future. So it's sort of why you want SAP to further further yourself as both an academic and a clinician. Um And again, just looking at the specification again, is this SAP? Um I, I don't know too much about the education ones but does it give you some kind of PD or something like that? So make sure you know what they're going to be giving you and what you're gonna gain from it? And where you can sort of take that in the future. So the second one was your experience in simulation training, the value and the value of development of simulation training for doctors. So again, quite similar. So what you gained from these experience experiences and sort of how it aided you as an academic, a clinician, an educator, those kind of things. Um and again, what you didn't gain, so maybe, maybe you thought that simulation training was not relevant to clinical experience at all, but maybe you've got ideas to make it different, maybe you've got ideas to make benefit future doctors in different ways. Um So sort of pit bull benefits that kind of stuff. Um and just trying to sort of jot down your ideas on a piece of paper and then, um like, don't sort of, I know it may be quite stressful because a lot of ideas are sort of fairly generic and you don't want to be writing the same thing as everyone else. But sometimes it's better to show a skill than not write something just because maybe a lot of people have done it. But if you do have some kind of unique ideas or just things that you think will make you stand out, then just write everything down on paper and then you can sort of select from there. Um because obviously we were saying the, you don't have that many words to sort of narrow it down based on all the ideas you have. And so leadership and team work uh is fairly similar to everything we've been saying. So this is uh given an example of we demons demonstrated leadership abilities, this is in university um to say your specific role, how you contributed as a leader and it's relevant to academic activities. Um I sort of overlap this with team work as well. They're quite similar questions. Um But like just so again, just write down everything you think you've shown leadership and teamwork in and sometimes these will overlap and then maybe you'll have to allocate something you did to either leadership or team work. Just so you've shown both of those skills. So maybe you, I know, for example, I was a course rep at my uni um and then I did a lot of stuff at like me teaching and stuff like that. And I also did a lot of like of academic um stuff on like the student society. So I sort of had to allocate these roles to the specific skills I wanted to show because otherwise you're going to end up repeating yourself. So if you've done a certain role and it's done, I know you can allocate it, loads of skills. Sometimes you have to fine tune that and decide these skills are gonna go to this and some other skills are gonna go to some other role you've shown. Um But again, e even if you've just done you don't have to have led a whole society or something like that. Even if you've just done a small amount of leadership, maybe just led some kind of session, gave some kind of talk where you led in something. It's always good to just write those things down because it's more about what you've shown what you've gained and what you're going to gain in the future. Um, and then relate it sort of back to how you'll be working as because you'll be a foundation doctor as in, I was staying as well. So not just be doing sp so how those things will aid you in the clinical world but also in the academic world. Um And then you can just have a look at what your specific place you want to apply for once. Um I'd also recommend reaching out to them as well as possible for the specific areas. Um So I think you can do this with so the teaching as well if they have, because most of them are linked to universities. So if they're linked to university, you can contact some kind of tutor, maybe they're doing some kind of program which you've always been interested in and you want to involve yourself more. Um So I know when I was applying for Norwich, uh I focus quite heavily on neuroscience and neuroscience wasn't listed in one of the things offers. Um So I contacted someone at um who was working at the university who was doing projects in neuroscience. And also they would take me and then I asked someone else that they would take me and they said they would. So these are important things to sort of have both of the A P um and the interviews later. Um You don't have to sort of have to say sort of broad things they say in the ification, you can then look at the university itself of the link and see what kind of things you could really actually involve yourself if you were given the chance. Um But yeah, and then your skills as a leader as well. Um So uh skipped over to choose the time you led there. But just yes, before times you've led times you've been on a team and then you broke it down into all those specific things we spoke about before and if it only a couple of them, great, um sometimes you are better if you've got loads of things on the go. Uh I think they're worth mentioning. Uh But don't overload your answer with sort of one, just whole list if you've got one teaching experience, which you think really changed everything. Um We've got also got four others which they a bit, maybe men mention them as well. But if you can get a really solid answer out of one sort of specific example, and you can say a lot about it about your development, what you're going to achieve what you'd like to achieve those kind of things, feedback, all those kind of things, you might be better to write a lot for one specific example and just mention the others as opposed to try and sort of half hearted, explain all of them when you don't have enough words. Um And then just general skills about like those two things. So leadership being a good listener conflict, sort of any kind of hurdles you've overcome. Um And why you think you could overcome them in teams in the future? Are you supportive, approachable, that kind of thing, decision making. And again, as a clinician, you'll have a lot of like decisions and team work and leadership roles as well. So it's quite important to men demonstrate that, you know, these things. Um But yeah, just linking back to those skills and experiences. OK. So for the team of question, I'll just quickly go through the one that I wrote and for my answer and just to give a bit back story. So there, there were several different teamwork experiences from my time at university or the classic sorts of experiences like extracurricular societies and whatnot that I could have written in more depth about. But on reflection, I really took a step back and thought which one experience in life has really shaped me the most. And I, I've kind of um focused a bit more on the fact that I've worked at my parents' restaurant and I had an advice from a couple of my mentor slash consultants who said, ah, you probably shouldn't talk about that because surgeons classically, especially the older ones, you know, they, they prefer that this academic upbringing and all that. But honestly, I just sacked off their advice. And that's again, an example of people might have conflicting ideas. You don't have to stick to one person's advice and I decided to run with it because I could draw the most experiences. And then I essentially painted around that one experience with my other sort of classic um extracurricular experiences. So I'll just quickly run through my question. Um my answer rather. So I worked at my parents fish and chips restaurant. Over several years, my brother and I helped run the establishment during our university holidays to ease our parents workload. So highlighting the leadership aspect of things there, working long hours during holidays, helped build my resilience. So just throwing in throwing in that buzzword of resilience. Additionally, supervising the inventory and finances advance my management abilities which I utilize during my time as Treasurer of the Imperial Cardiac Society. So again, as I mentioned, I, I thought if I draw some experiences or skills that are also relevant to some of my other extracurricular societies, it might be quite a nice way to write this question rather than just having one experience that you can only discuss the role also in involved preparing the food and using complex machinery which may be more competent and complete in manual tasks and meticulously following protocols. So the reason I wrote that was kind of thinking about the surgical side of things which I want, which I want to pursue in the future. I assumed leadership of the staff when needed, which set me in good ST during my time as president of the Imperial Acute Care specialties Society, moreover, serving customers, develop my attitude in communicating with people with differing life experiences. So I put that in because this time, I'm thinking more about the clinical side of things. So as we mentioned, don't just focus on research, think about the clinical side. Um And that obviously just communication with patients. But you could also argue it's communication working in a research team as well. Most importantly, I learned the ability to multitask and work under pressure to ensure customer satisfaction, catering to customer demands in a food establishment mirrors the patient centred approach of medical treatment. So you could argue that's probably drawing that experience out a bit too much. But again, I I thought that was quite a relevant link and I genuinely did feel like working or just talking to customers, did improve my ability to just like interact with patients in the hospital as well. This experience has taught me how to thrive under pressure and communicate effectively. These skills will allow me to complete tasks to high standards and effectively interact with patients and researchers from different backgrounds and with varying degrees of knowledge. So this time, I kind of rounded it all up, brought the skills together and said, how this will help me not only as a researcher, but also as a clinician. And I think it was just a nice way to, to end it and it follows that style structure as we mentioned before. Um Yes. And this year, apart from the team work question, you also have a leadership question. Um So um question is give one example in which you have demonstrated your leadership abilities. The example should be from your undergraduate experience or postgraduate experience if relevance and should identify your specific role and contribution as a leader and its relevance to academic activities. So we didn't really have this one last year. But um I kind of like made a little one for the for this presentation. Um So yeah, as background, I mean, I kind of explain everything in the answer, but I've been working as a student ambassador since I was in my third year. Um And we've run lots of events especially widening participation events. Um So I thought that was quite a good example for the team work or for leadership skills. So if you've had any part time job, especially if it's one where you're involved in um events for prospective medical medical students and prospective doctors definitely mention that or any volunteering that you have done. So, um I work for the recruitment and widening participation team for my university as a student ambassador. As part of my role, I have led events and mentoring programs for school students from year nine to year 13 who are interested in studying medicine in particular. I have run a UCAT preparation course for sixth form students from from a widening participation background who are blind to study medicine or dentistry which involves me leading a team in order to prepare and run the event. So I've kind of set the scene. I've explained what it was um back. Yeah. And now I'm going to explain the this how this shows that I've got good leadership skills running. This program helped me develop my leadership skills. I learned how to support other team members, mediate in times of disagreement, be a better listener and become more adaptable, all of which are essential skills to have as a leader. These skills are quite general. So I think you can probably use them in your examples. Um or you can use some of the ones from the list, from the list in the previous slides. I believe leadership is an important element of academic and clinical medicine. And therefore these skills will be useful when leading academic research groups and clinical teams, as well as when liaising with other members of the multidisciplinary team in medicine, the provision of the UC workshops also helps improve my presentation and public speaking skills which are essential as a leader in academia, this presentation of research is common in front of different teams and conferences. So the way I've structured this answer is I've, I've set the scene, I've explained what I have done. Then I have explained why, what I have done to the UCAT course has helped me develop my leadership skills. Um And I've given examples of what um what I have done that or what skills I have developed that are essential to be a good leader. And then I have explained why being a good leader is very important as an SFP doctor, essentially. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. So that rounds off our presentation. Thanks everyone for listening. Are there any questions if everyone wants to just throw them in? If not, there's just a few points that I really wanted to highlight as well, whilst anyone wants to write a message. So based on my experience and um my living work to throw yours in as well. So I think time is very, very important with this. So don't underestimate how long this will take. I appreciate. It just looks like five questions, 200 words each. But what you'll find is down the line, you're going to want to change your answer a lot. Um You're going to feel like there's something in one answer that you might throw in elsewhere. But then once you do that, that messes up the structure and work, count there and it really does take a long time, you're going to have people proof reading, they're all going to have differing advice. So then you're always going to be in conflict, conflict and debate about, oh, this person said this, this person said this, you need time to actually sit down and think about it to formulate an answer that you're actually happy to submit. So don't leave it all to the last minute and also bear in mind if you send it to others to prove it's going to take them time to get back to you 5, 10 days however long. But especially if they're busy and high up researchers, so don't underestimate the time one. And also the other thing for me personally, I, I was always getting worried. I said I was looking at all these other answers and looking at my final product and thinking, oh, well, I don't think I stuck to the structure here. I feel like I didn't mention this here. And don't worry at the end of the day, you can see our answers in terms of structure, in terms of experiences were somewhat different. But at the end of the day, if you have some sort of structure, you've written it. Well, um you've put those skills across it really doesn't matter and just don't stress too much about what other people are doing, just get through to the interview. And at the end of the day, that's where you really get to show off and that's where, um, the, the jobs are won and lost ultimately. Um, so those are just two main things from, from my side that I wanted to highlight. Yeah, I probably add, I think one thing I was quite stressed about was, uh, I wasn't really sure what speciality I wanted to do. Um, but to make my answer sort of quite nice. Uh, I thought, I thought I better to sort of focus down on one of them. Um, I'm not saying sort of focus down on something you really don't want to do. But like, if you are a bit, I think it's normally I wouldn't stress about it too much. I'd probably just kind of choose something you like and then just sort of work from there. Um, I wouldn't stress of like all your, maybe all the research you've done is towards, I don't know, cardiology, cardiology society. But if you want to do something else now, like that's ok and people, it's more about just showing these skills and showing you have interest and things. It doesn't have to be like everything towards cardiology or something like that. Um, I think it's just quite nice to try and just make a journey as much as possible to just show how you've gotten the most out of medical school, how you've gotten the most out of your time outside of medical school and then how you want to do that in the SFP as well, just sort of this journey of how, at sort of every, well, not every opportunity but most opportunities you've taken the most out of what you could from it and how you've just gone out of your way and how you're gonna sort of represent the SSP well and get the most out of this experience too. But yeah, we, I think we just had a question as well from ur. Um, so when do you recommend submitting your application early on like the 20th or towards the middle or does it not affect the application? So I'll just quickly give my consent. I submitted mine like three hours before because again, my first point was time. Don't leave it to last minute, which I did. And I had a couple of really nice supervisors who eventually did it in like the last couple of days. So I ended up submitting mine quite late. I'm here now. So I don't think it really matters, just submit it when you feel like it's ready. And ultimately, you are going to want to make changes like even up until the hour before, but once you're confident and you're happy with it, just send it and that's fine. But again, just try and get it as early as possible, uh done as early as possible and then just submit it when you feel like it's ready. Yeah, probably, probably quite like a personal thing. I'd probably like to leave something. I do it fairly early on, but probably wouldn't submit it too close to the deadline because I know you never know when you're gonna get another piece of inspiration or something. But um obviously you're busy with like uh medical school final year. That's quite busy. So, try and just get it done and mean, whenever you feel it's right. So, do you have to write different white space questions for different deaneries or will one set of answers apply to all deaneries? Oh, and before we jump to that answer, if everyone could please fill in the feedback, obviously helps us out tremendously. Um So we'd really appreciate that whilst we answer that. But yeah, does do one of you two wanna also that one? Uh Yes. So that um so there's the same uh change, there's the same white space question. Uh You just need to look at your specific deary. There's lots of changes every year as well as to whether your deary want the white face questions. And, and also, um I know for example, how they prioritize them. So there's different um like some people prioritize different things or I don't know, they'll look at other things more favorably. Um But just sort of check with the specifications of each scenery and definitely see, do they want it? Um But yeah, yeah, I think the, the other thing that you were asking Emily is I think you're trying to get to do you write two separate sets of white space questions for the two D. Is that correct? If, if that is the case, I'll address that because that might be something others were wondering because I was definitely wondering the same. I think it's all streamline. You're just going to write the one answer for each white space question. Um which makes it difficult because in the year before ours, they had different sets of answers for the different deaneries. OK. Perfect. Yeah. So which made it longer for them because they had to write double the number of answers, but ultimately, they could tailor their answers, not only to themselves but also to each Deanery and really get sure that way. So it's going to be difficult if there's overlap in the dearies that you're applying to which so when I applied, I did Scotland and Norwich because they both offered ent rotations plus ent research. And so I was able to kind of overlap and tailor my thing answer to both. I appreciate that might be difficult for, for some of you, but don't worry too much. You don't have to at this stage if you can tailor it to each individual dean. Great. But you'll find you probably won't have the word count, but also it doesn't really make a difference. That's more so in the interview where that's really a bonus. Um So yeah, I think it's just one answer for both dearies and it doesn't really matter if you can't write specifics for each one, in my opinion. Yeah, I think, um, so I didn't fully understand that. But, um, yeah, so the same one. But, so I know, for example, I, I think I said I was focusing quite a lot of neuroscience. Um, and I think, uh, I can't remember now but the other one s, they did, uh, they did offer it somewhere but no, didn't. Um, and I was quite stressed because I was like, oh God, I don't wanna like, put all my stuff into one basket and then one reason they think, oh, well, she clearly hasn't, doesn't know about and doesn't know we offer. Um, so that's when I just emailed them and said if I want to do this in. No, could I do it? I guess so to try and sort of compliment those. But don't sort of anything too detri detrimental if they really don't offer anything you're saying. So, yeah. Um, apparently thanks for that. Olivia. I think the feedback form doesn't work, which isn't ideal. Um, yeah, so I think so. That one's not the feedback form. So that's um, just a link to the feature of it. And so the feedback form we need to send it on here. So, um, I'm just, um, doing the logistics for that. No worries. Cool. Do you need any help? I mean, if we can't do it this session, if you, the people who turn up today, if you don't mind. We might just double it up in the next session if you also turn up to that. And I think just be on kind of for us like the moderator should be somewhere an r on the side if any of you just find that. Yeah. So if you said it's been email, which is great. Um ok, then that's not too bad. Yeah, because I, for some reason I can't find, oh, I, I think I've been uh cool. Yeah. So is that the email people would have gotten? Perfect. Any other questions? When will the mentorship program start as part of this course? Um But I know um I'm not sure but I know that is in our progress. Um What I'll probably do is I'll post that on the Instagram page. Um So you just say stay updated for that. Um I know sort of been discussions about it recently. Um But just stay, yeah, just stay update on that and we'll post sort of sign up for it and as mentor. Cool. Yeah, I think we'll probably leave it there if there aren't any questions. I know one final point for me. Don't get too stressed, just enjoy it. Uh There's another comment, Emes is great. Thank you. No problem. Um Don't get too stressed. Keep enjoying your final year. You'll only get that experience once. Um But also just be aware that this is a l some extra work that you need to get on with, especially in the interview will require a lot of effort. So just brace yourselves, but just look after yourselves, enjoy yourselves that have a nice evening, have a nice evening and everything.