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Yeah. Yeah. So, hello everyone. My name is Santa. Now, I'm a third year medical student at the University of Sheffield and welcome to the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Surgery evening. I'm just gonna get started by giving you a little introduction about what we're going to do today. So what is an academic and surgery evening? These are just events organized by medical students who are interested in academic surgery. The main aim is to really promote surgery and academic surgery as a career of breath and d facilitate networking opportunities. And we also want to promote opportunities for engagement with regional national groups for surgery, the academic and surgery evenings, first time to place uh in 2021 where approximately 31 ACS uh were organized by medical students and around 850 attendees attended the events. So these tend to be quite a nice way to get information about surgery. Let me take you through the program. So first I'm going to get started about um research as a, as a medical student. So I'm going to be talking about that for a bit. Uh and then we'll have Mitchell who's from um, university of Holyoke, talking about getting involved in surgery as a student, followed by Angus who's going to talk about the specialized foundation program. And the last year talks are going to be done by Mr Ravine who's in ST six, uh, registrar informant orthopedics about economic surgery and research. So let me just get started with my talk. Um, this is me, I'm a third year student at the University of Sheffield, I'm also the region lead for Star Search and I'm going to talk about getting involved in research as a medical student. So what exactly is research? It's really a way to get answers to questions about medicine and this is something conducted at all stages of medical progression. So whether you're a medical student or trained doctor or consultant, everybody does research and without it no advancements in medicine, Lyrica. So what are the different types of research? You've got wet lab research which is primarily based on the lab. You need specialized training for these kinds of research because you may use specialized equipment like microscopy, your chromatography or techniques, things like DNA genome sequencing. Um And these tend to be quite time intensive in the sense that it takes many years for results to get published and for you to present our conferences. But they tend to be quite practical and quite hands on which is why a lot of people like doing what library said the next is it's try lab research, which is primarily online based. This was my first project and examples of this would be systematic review, meta analysis, uh literature reviews and things like that. They are quite convenient because their computer based where they tend to be, we tend to get quite boring at times if you're just at home, fiddling with different types, numbers and statistics. But yes, they are quite convenient. Um And then lastly, you've got clinical research which is supervised by a consultant such in clinical settings, um primarily clinical trials or audits. Uh They are quite patient friendly, patient interactive. So you see loads of patient's in clinical research. So research consists of many different stages, starting from the conception of an idea to dissemination of information. You've got to have an idea, discuss it with the research supervisor, former protocol, former theme, former team, sorry. Um collect data, conduct analysis which can be statistics or um some graphs or sometimes medical research, users, programming languages um and things like that. And then you finally right up your findings in a manuscript, you edit your manuscript and then you send it off for publication. Uh And I had this research project that I started off in my um in the first few months of my second year, which I've only, just which we've only just sent to a general. So um I think what I want you to get from this slide in a nutshell is to understand that research takes a long time. And it takes a lot of commitment as well. And towards the end, you disseminate your information via publications or poster presentations over presentations at conferences. So why should you get involved in research? It is a very good way to know more about a specialty you're interested in or remotely interested in. It's a good way to improve and widen your medical sort of network with consultants and training doctors. It is good to understand diseases and clinical processes. But most importantly, it is really useful for scoring points and applications, especially surgical training jobs which are quite competitive. So some questions you want to ask yourself before starting a research project is to know what subject or topic you're interested in. It is useful to be involved in projects that you are interested in specialty Vyse because you would be spending a lot of time on it and you want to be motivated to do the work. Um And lastly, you also want to know and you want to explain this to your research supervisor, the final objectives of what you want to achieve if you want to get published. Uh And that is your expectation, then that is something you should discuss with them. So they can assign work depending on that. You should obviously be very honest and humble about your skill set and what you can deliver. You don't want to over promise and under deliver, you want to over deliver and under promise that makes any sense. And when you first start off, um if you don't have a lot of skills and then you may start off as 1/4 or fifth author and a project. But as you slowly move up bladder, um you gain the skills set and become a first or second author. So there are two different ways to get involved throughout your medical school you would do in co curricular research, which is embedded in the curriculum and performed as a prerequisite extracurricular researches, everything you do outside of that and through your own contacts. So this can be your student selected components. So the six week research I did in my second year was something compulsory. Um Some medical schools have intergration as um as a compulsory one year degree. So this is like a year you take outside um and do research on a topic of your interest or you can have electives which are like six or eight week blocks of periods within your 3rd and 4th years where you can do research abroad and extracurriculars, anything you get involved in by yourself. So if you are interested in a certain specialty, shoot an email to a consultant or trade doctor, ask them if they have any research projects available, anything you get involved in. Uh And if they don't have anything, they obviously guide you in the right direction. Uh And these also include collaborated research, like collaborative audits. It is quite essential that you find a good research supervisor, somebody who's based at your university, so it's easy to do the meetings. Um, and somebody who's regularly publishing if you want to get published. And because research takes a lot of time and you'd be spending loads of time together and discussing and doing meetings, it is important that you find somebody who's friendly, you can ask questions. Um, now the daunting part out of all of this is contacting somebody you don't really know very well. And I think the best way to do this is to display your keenness through the email that you send. Um tell them you've really are interested in something you would do the hard work, send them your C V. So they have something to look at. Um Not everybody will reply because people are really busy, but some people might and that might just click as I said, send your CV when you email them and you can also approach clinicians after a lecture. So use pointers from a lecture as a conversation starter, explain your interests. If they don't have anything for you at the moment, they would guide you in the right direction to somebody who might so put yourself on the radar. I just thought I'd take a minute to talk about my own experience. So I did a six week research project in my second year with the School of Health and academic related Sciences at the university. Um I did a systematic review. And my main role was writing and editing the manuscript that was sent for publication to the Angels of Surgery. And from this, I also got to present to posters at a conference. My next project was organizing an audit with Star Search that was quite admin heavy, it was set within Sheffield teaching hospitals. Uh And my last project was a qualitative research which was based on COVID 19. And I did that with this organization called Sheffield Community Conduct Races. So it was quite internal, there was no scope of publication and we just sort of presented our work within the organization conference. So my main aim of giving you the slide is really do display that research can be quite varied. Uh And you should get involved in different kinds of things to see what you like and to get different kinds of um experiences in different kinds of skill sets just to finish off, you could also use Star Search has developed this um e learning academically learning platform and collaboration with the University of Edinburgh. Uh And they have loads of courses on academic surgery, surgical pathways, uh different types of researchers like study designs and different types of um stats and um different ways researchers conducted. So this is something you can do in your own time and then about research. And yeah, if you have any questions, please pop them in the chat, uh you can also visit Star Sausage on there website or Twitter. I'm just gonna get the screen to Mitchell now. Um, hello guys. It's my screen. Oh, can you guys see my screen? Yes. Yeah, we can see it. Okay. So, uh, my name is Mitchell Shula and I material your medical sooner. Took the whole York medical school. And I'm also regional lead for Star Surged the med school this year. So I'm going to be doing a token, uh, career in surgery and out to get involved in med school. So surgery can be very worrying, but it's also notoriously very competitive. And that's why building a strong CB early during your med school career is very, very advantageous. So the typical surgical training part way in the UK is that follows. So after medical, you started foundation training, um which is your F one and F two years and then you go into court a surgical training or an academic clinical fellowship. And after that, you start your specialty training um with or without some clinical lectureship. And then after you become a consultant in the specialty that you chose, so you call um what's really, really important is your portfolio and uh portfolio is made of many different components and achievements can be from the med school onwards and it's very, very important to collect evidence. So a good guide um can be found on the NHS Health education uh for England website, which contains all the latest information on what's needed to score the maximum points that you can on the on the portfolio. So, um regarding a 23 2023 application cycle, sorry. And there's a focus on core a surgical training requirement and that's common, that's a common team across all. So that's regardless of the surgical specialty that you would like to do. And it's also quite important to mention that the perfect candidate does not exist and you shouldn't be discouraged if you don't have a perfect score in your portfolio. And that also points are not the same as value. So you shouldn't let the points that you have in your portfolio determine the value and the strength of your application. So how do you build your portfolio as a medical student? So you can show commitment to your specialty and this can be done by attending surgical conferences, by obtaining operative experience and by doing surgical electives in your fourth year, you can also do some quality improvement project, which is simple but effective and they're in a specified area of interest uh where you audit this against a standard and you represent, present this to the department and you're able to submit to, to conferences as well. What's essentially in audit is to re audit and to close the loop. Um You should also do presentations which can be at local, regional, national or international level and this can be oral presentations or pasta presentations. And if you're struggling financially, um something to bear in mind is that sometimes you're able to present a virtual conferences. And so it's always worth to have a look, look around for those. Um Also try and aim as high as possible. Uh The worst thing that can happen is that your presentation gets rejected for uh that you don't scare you at all um presentations. Um Regarding that if your presentation is actually quite good, you can win prices and that scores points in your portfolio as well. Publications, publications can be of different types. And um you can do those during your inter collation year which allows students decides to do um during their med school career. Uh you can do those as collab collaborative research and however, they must be pod mitt excitable to score points in your portfolio. Teaching is always worth um engaging in teaching was of medical school and setting them some teaching series because that's a very good way to score points in your portfolio. And if you're able to, it's also worth having a chat to your surgical society and try it and try to do the teaching sessions in groups. Um and most importantly is to receive feedback from the students that you've been teaching and to document this. So, you know, it's readily available when you asked for it in your portfolio. So building your portfolio further as a medical student, you can also get all the degrees and qualifications. So let's say you, you did it on the graduate degree and then you did medical medical school afterwards that would score your point. And also when you interc yeah, late um you get points as well. So price is an award so they can be national or local and you get awards for presenting research as well. And what's quite good is that if you've been scoring really, really good, good grades at medical schools and you get to graduate with honors or distinctions that can set you apart from the competition because it's cause you point and you also get points for receiving scholarships or bursaries or grants also do get involved in leadership and management roles. Uh This can be done by joining the Surgical Society of your Medical school or any other other society for that matter. Um You can also apply to join committees for the B M A star surge as well and also show evidence of interest, get to know surgeons and surgical trainees and it would be ideal to find a mentor. Uh Do you understand that that's not always possible but that can be very, very beneficial. And most importantly, evidence is crucial. Make sure that everything, every single thing that you do is recorded in a systematic and organized fashion. So my own experience, um I haven't been uh involved directly in, in surgery as of yet, but um I can tell you about maximizing points in your surgical portfolios to start early, the earlier the better. Um Honestly, even first year of medical school, if you've got some opportunities, do get involved, do not shy away from those. Um Also with advice to apply for a roll of star search. And that goes without saying, and also trying to reach out to your clinical teaching fellows at your medical school. Um because those can become mentors and they can guide you and point you to the to the right direction. And even if they can be necessarily your mentors, they can introduce you to some colleagues that they've known as you work in, in, in the NHS, they're in their foundation years. So other tips I've got for you is to be strategic, be realistic with your time to help each other be organized and use the uh the log book. And if you've got any questions to just pop them in the chat or send them at Star Search and I'm going to give it to and kit. Thank you. So I will just um share my screen quickly. Um So mhm So can you see my screen here? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So everyone, so I'm blanket, I'm a finally a med student at Leeds. Um And I'll be talking about the SFP. Um So I thought I could speak about the SFP because I applied for the SFP this year and in a few months' time, I'll be starting F one um in Leeds. Um And I'll be doing my SFP post in F two in leeds as well um in medical education. Uh So hopefully I can shed some light on the application process. And if you guys have any questions, then by all means, you can ask me and I can try and help. Um So I just go through a little bit of the outline, first of all. So some of you may know as the academic foundation program, it changed its name a few years ago or quite recently to the specialized foundation program. But essentially, it's exactly the same thing. Um in terms of broad themes of the SFP, you get one protected four months block or in the northern unit, which contains Newcastle in Cumbria, you get to four months blocks. So, so 14 months block in F 114 months block to um to do an area of interest. That's um that could be either research meds or entrepreneurial to something like leadership as well. Um More specifically just related to the, to the Yorkshire and Humber SFP S because that's what we're talking about today. They often include a funded PG set. Um And it's basically a postgraduate certificate in either research or medical education. And again, that will help to get you some points as well as it's an additional qualification. Um And, and if you weren't, if you were to fund it yourself, it costs around four or 5000 lbs. So it's really good that it's included as part of your F one and F two posts. So the way that it works is in the normal foundation program, you apply to a U O A or a unit of application and it's very similar for the SFP. So you apply, you apply to a specialized unit of application and I believe they're around 10 or 12 of these um in the UK and you can apply to a maximum of two. So you can apply to say, for example, Yorkshire and then you can apply to London, for example, but no more than two and you could apply to one if you wanted to. Um in terms of scoring criteria, it differs by units. So some people or some units put a lot of emphasis on whitespace questions which will come to talk about um some units interview, some units don't. So for example, Yorkshire does an interview. It's, it's fully based on a self assessment form which will go through. Um But it's a good idea if you want to go to one of these places, just have a look at what they're desiring from their applicants. So you can try and steer your portfolio and CV from now until the time that you apply. And it's really useful for building up your portfolio. You get four months basically away from hospitals and GPS to do your own thing to teach or to do some research. And so you can build up a lot of points during that time and, and it's interesting. It's, it's sort of well, helps to explore people's interests here. If you're interested in teaching, you get four months basically a protected teaching, whether that's in the med school or something else or in the hospitals. And it also is a stepping stone to future academic careers as well. So, yeah. So, so as we talked about it as a protected for months, academic block typically in, in your f two year. And so you'll be away from the hospital, you won't have clinical time. Um And it's part of I cattle the integrated clinical academic training pathway. Um and as Mitchell talked a little bit about it can sort of be a stepping stone to, to um academic careers later down the line. So academic clinical fellowships, lecture ships and so on. So more specifically to Yorkshire. So they were 81 posts for this current academic year and I believe that will stay the same for at least the next year. So they upped it from 66 from what I got told, apparently there were 450 applicants for 81 posts. Um So there's a ratio of around 151126. and then in terms of deadlines, if there's any of you that are fourth years, um it's around September time when you need to complete your academic form. So it's a couple of months earlier and then your normal U K F P O in terms of ranking jobs and stuff. Um So it's just something to be aware of and to make sure you get your whitespace questions and all of your evidence ready by September time at the very latest. So this is taken directly from the Yorkshire and Humber website, which we can go through very, very quickly. Um So there's a, this is a self assessment form and it's basically the different domains that you're scored on. Um So this is the academic self assessment. There is a skills based self assessment by know, relatively few people completed that one just because it was a little trickier to get some of the points as as it was compared to this. Um But it's all on the website. If you guys did want to have a look, I just thought I'd talk about this one is it's the main one that you can really get a lot of points on. So in terms of additional degrees and qualifications, so things like inter collation, previous degrees obviously count um And the highest amount of points is given for masters. Um obviously, first class degrees will be given a lot of points as well. Prizes and awards. So again, a bit like we spoke about earlier and if you get any awards during med school and any prizes and these will count for points and and the most points will be given for those that are given nationally and then a few less for the ones that are given regionally presentations and posters. So something that's very achievable during med school. Um if you're involved in research, more often than not, people will try to present before they publish. So it's sort of milking that research as much as you can for as many points as you can get publications. Again, the only thing it needs to be is pub mid indexed, but you will get points for that and you'll get points for the highest publication that you've got. So whether that's first author, you would get the max points or if, if, even if you have seven second author papers that won't count as much as your first author, one if that makes sense um teaching. So if you've been involved in, in, for example, I was involved in tutoring GCSE students that still counted for some points. But if you have a formal teaching role that that counts for a few more uh Q I P S audits again, very, very easy to get involved with as, as a med student, you can always ask clinical leads on placements um to get involved and in leadership and management. So say, for example, if you've been part of any societies, so this is just a bit more detail about the first two um scoring criteria that we talked about. So, so we talked about how you get the maximum of points if you have a master's degree. And when you get a few less points if you got a first class two and so on and so on. Prizes and awards. Exactly the same thing. So if you get a national prize, you get the max points. Um and if you get some, some sort of local prizes such as from your medical school, you get one less point. So white space questions. Um this is something that a lot of um, the units of application now use. Um And it's basically a selection of questions that assess various different skills. So um they will always release these whitespace questions of a few weeks in advance before the before the deadline. So you've got a few weeks to prepare your answers and then submit the form and often they'll ask things like describe um a situation where you were involved in leadership or involved in teamwork or describe your research experience and a bunch of questions like that essentially that helped them to come up with a picture of you and, and, and, and they will score you on that. So I know, for example, I applied to the Northern Dean Ary and this was all essentially all that they used for scoring people or short listing people for interview. So it's weighted really heavily by some I know from Yorkshire is waited a lot less heavily and more on that self assessment for. So just it would be a good idea just to check how the different units way this up. Um And obviously, if you can try and draft them out several times before submission and always double check everything, that would be great. I got a lot of people to check mine and I think it really helps having done it a few weeks in advance rather than leaving it all to the last minute. So in terms of dates very, very quickly, I know it's a, it's a long way away, but it will come out much more before your peers. So your peers that are not doing the SFP office will be in January where as everybody else gets the normal foundation program jobs in around March or April and you have 48 hours to accept or decline that post. Um and there's rounds of office so don't be disheartened if you don't get it in the first round, there is still a chance that you can get it in, in the second round, third round and forth round. So depending on who rejects the offer, they will keep on cycling um offers until, until they're filled up. So thank you very much. Um And I shall pass you on, I shall stop sharing my screen and I shall pass you onto Mr Ravi. Good evening. Thanks for uh inviting me just to make sure everyone's kind of still with us. Just a very quick couple of polls uh see who we have with us. So let's see of what specialties we have present that one responses me. So a few neurosurgery, lots of general surgeons, a few more cardiothoracic surgeons. Yeah, real mix, know max facts and you one plastic surgeon fair enough. And then um the next thing I want to ask was um at present, how much do you want to be involved in research in the future? So this is a academic surgery presentation but I appreciate everyone's standpoint on this is going to be quite different really. So you tell me where you are currently, how involved do you think you want to be fully appreciate this may change? Well, you're doing that, I'm gonna move you on to a different screen. So mostly people want to be involved in some way and it might be just recruiting or you might want to be A P I less people are wanting to do a cheap beer chief investigator. Fair enough. Well, maybe I'll change your mind. We'll see. So, uh let me uh my screen. Uh So yeah, thanks for inviting me to talk this evening. Um It's a really good advice from the last three speakers. Uh Thanks for kind of covering some of that stuff. I'm going to speak a little bit more about kind of my journey and my experience in kind of the classic academic surgical line. Um the good and the bad. Uh and then a little bit about spinal surgery, which is kind of my area of interest and a couple of slides on my area of research. Uh And maybe I might convince uh so we need to change what direction hectoring. So what I'd say about knowing about what kind of consultant you want to be at the end is, it's very different to what you need to do to get into and through training. So as uh it has kind of mentioned before, you need to score almost across the board, you, you can't really compensate one section of, of an application form of national recruitment by another section. You almost have to play the spread. Um So you need to score in every category to some extent because it's not easy to cross compensate. But when you're a consultant, you don't need to be able to do everything. And actually when you're building your consultant team, you want to have different individuals who have a one focus on one thing. So it might be that you're the workhorse, you are the person who loves their clinical job, doesn't want to do anything extra, but just want to operate, see patient's and get the clinical job done to the maximum ability. And actually you need people in the team who just do that. It might be that you want to be the team lead. You want to run the department, make decisions about how your service runs or how your local network runs. And you need a couple of individuals who want to take all that role. You might want to be the educational lists and that might be training junior doctors. It might be teaching undergraduates, but someone needs to form that role. It might be that you want to do a national representation role and involved in politics, in policy making within the NHS. Or you might want to do academia and be a researcher and it might be that you straddle a couple of these roles. But generally, if you have some idea about one key niche that you want to fulfill in whatever team that you enter, that's quite a strong position to be in when you're at the end of your registrar training. But I appreciate at your level when you're trying to get in, you need to play the spread across all of them. But I guess what I want to reassure you is you don't need to be able to do everything to the highest level. You do a little bit of everything to get into training and then find your niche about what you want to do long term. But today, today I'm gonna be speaking about the academic research side of things. So my career pathway to date uh I started back in 2006, I did an integrated BE MEDS I in 2008 and that was kind of real mixed set of skills. There was some laboratory biomarker analysis, there was some scan based analysis of some clinical scores. So a real mix of skills that I got out of my be mid side. Uh I graduated in 2012 and got a medical education AFP or SFP as it's called. Now, the, the reason I chose Med Ed at the time was uh I knew the department well and I knew I could continue doing the research that I had already started in the region. So applied for research elsewhere. So in Warrick Newcastle, uh Oxford, I applied for Medicaid and Sheffield actually medicine Sheffield's what I wanted to stay in one place. Uh And I could finish off the research that had already started during my undergrad. Um So that was my foundation two years and then I secured an N I H R A C S an academic Clinical Fellowship. This gives you some protected research time. Um And it also gives you your national training number. So it gave me some job security uh for higher specialist training. Uh got my mrcs in 2016 and then start my registrar training in 2017. Uh And since starting that, I stepped out for three years, I want you to do a leadership fellowship two years to do a uh what is normally a post CCT fellowship doing it early and doing a phd. And then once a complete 2020 26 posi CT fellowships in Brisbane and one of the one in the UK. And then hopefully the consultant job will be ready in 2028. And what I kind of want to highlight by that really long journey is you're going to be training for as many years as you are a consultant and that some people feel a really itch to get to the end to be a consultant as soon as you can and that might be right for you. But for me, I very much didn't have any real rush to get to the end because once you're a consultant, your job role is pretty similar for the next decade and a half. So I was quite happy to have this variability for the 1st 22 years of my career. But broadly, my protected academic time has been five years and this was one year BMS I four months doing an A F B nine months, which was 33 month blocks during the A CF took a year out to do a leadership fellowship which was predominantly in surgical education, but I did a part time MSC in surgical innovation and then two years doing specialist fellowship and out of program research phd. So it's just over five years. But this is, this is just the dedicated academic time. There's plenty more that you do doing your clinical time that you try and juggle. Um So I'm quite aware from that poll that not everyone wants to do research to the highest level. And when I was writing this presentation, I was like, I totally get that because I was thinking about why you shouldn't do this. Um So as I said, extend your trading by five years, there are periods of time where you may take quite significant pay cut. Now, it shouldn't be so significant for your generation. For me. A third of our salary was are on court supplement which you lose when you do things like med or research. So you, you kind of need to plan ahead. You might want to do additional low comms. I've been really fortunate that whilst I've taken five years out, I haven't really felt a significant loss in my salary cause I've paid attention to the locum and cover shift that was coming up to make sure that didn't have an impact. Um More things you strive to do, the more things you're likely to fail at during the process, which is progress. So just doing your clinical job, you're going to have failures. If you're going to take on academic surgery, on top of that, you're striving for more things and that comes with more failure. Um So you need to be extra resilient to take that on. Um You're appalled in a lot of directions. People want you to help with so many different things and you're very much in demand, especially if you're, you're good. Um So you feel like you're kind of pulled in multiple directions and you do end up working a bit longer and a bit harder than the average. And that makes it really difficult to protect your downtime. Um There's also a bit of a MS cinema that academics are, are bad surgeons, but hopefully I'll kind of explain why that's probably not the case. So I'm giving you all the all the negatives. Hopefully I can give you all the positives of why you should do academia or why you should at least consider being involved in some way. And I think it falls into kind of three broad categories. It's your contribution professionally to the field, your personal professional satisfaction and your personal social benefits. So if we start with professional contribution, it's a real privilege to be able to expand human knowledge and contribute to this wealth of knowledge. And that has a massive impact. It feels like your entire world when you're focused just on your research. Um but actually, you're contributing a tiny, tiny amount to the vastness of all knowledge, but it actually makes a difference and that's why we progress. And actually this additional lot knowledge is probably what makes an academic surgeon possibly better than a non academic surgeon clinically because actually the hard bit about being a surgeon is not the operating, it's the decision making, the complex decision making. And certainly the academics that I know are first and foremost in credible clinicians and surgeons technically, but their decision making is even better because they're aware of what researchers out there, why certain research should be followed. It shouldn't be and then how to actually design research. Well, so I think your own ability to care for your patient is a lot better as an academic. And then you also broadly change so many other people's approach to their clinical practice by whatever research that you you put out there um professionally, you, you raised the profile of your institution. Um and your department, it's nice to put your, your unit on the map and coming away with recognition for the for the unit is really important and it's something that you can contribute to much longer than when you clinically retire. Some surgical specialties are really physically demanding and that might mean that your kind of operative surgical career is going to be up to a certain point after which you probably shouldn't be on the on core trauma reuther or whatever, but you can probably contribute to furthering academia after you retired. So you can keep going in some way uh personally professionally. This is kind of a bit that hopefully rings true. Uh I love the the cognitive part of designing research. It's just really interesting. I like the touring and throwing of taking ideas, pulling apart, taking part methodologies. Understanding are we designing research? Right. So I actually quite like the cognitive part of research design. Um You work as part of an amazing team and your, your victories are very much as, as as a unit and that includes the mentoring of medical students. I get a lot of kind of satisfaction out of seeing our students do well, whether that's a winning price of the conferences or getting the foundation program want or the registrar number that they've been competing for. I certainly get satisfaction from seeing them succeed. Um, it's nice when people come to you as, as an expert and actually in really narrow area areas, you are going to be the world or national expert in, in a certain topic. Um And uh it just wonders for your ego. Um but being involved in research, you, you have to go to the absolute death of a certain area, uh of knowledge and then you're expanding that and no one will know that as well as you do if you're doing something quite niche and it's nice to be recognised. You get professional recognition from your peers. It's very easy to believe your work is of high quality. But when it's recognized by your peers who have some high standards, yeah, there's a sense of satisfaction behind that. But beyond that, there's, there's lots of social satisfaction. You get the opportunity to travel the world. One of my first conferences, uh was in Las Vegas. It was at the Venetian, which was just an Incredibles place to go as a third year medical student presenting from research. Um And I've been fortunate to go to many other places since um uh something that kind of further down the line. But you get financial stability if you get your registrar number S T one, you know, you're going to be bringing in a certain income for a certain amount of time, which means you're gonna start throwing down roots, buy a house, start a family, uh making some kind of substantial commitments and you start contribute, contributing to your geographical region and you feel like you're investing in a particular place. So for me, I feel like I'm very much thrown a lot of investment into how Sheffield these hospitals, the university um works. So you really feel you really feel like you're, you're, you're contributing. And my protected academic time gave me some really protected family time that I may not have got if I was doing a full time clinical job. So um my eldest daughter, Remy, she was broadly between the ages of 1.5 and 2.5 when I did my hee leadership fellowship and I was pretty much working from home for a year doing surgical educational research. But it gave me the most amazing. Once, one time with her, I could pick her up from school. I got the flexibility that I would never get in a full time clinical job. So that was really amazing. And then our youngest daughter, Lila was born while I was doing my phd and do a phd was doing a clinical job, but I was doing a really low intensity on call. So I could be there for the nursery drop offs and pickups and stuff like that. And it's important to be able to share in your success with your friends and your family or your parents. Um So that kind of people around you kind of share in your share in your success, success. And that's really important. The advice I give you that you begin loads advice from our previous speakers. I'll keep it really sure because they've kind of kind of said a lot of it is get a portfolio CV templates, um pick someone who has just been through registrar training and get their contents page because you will find that there are sections you didn't know existed that you needed to populate. So it might be quite intimidating to take their template and then realize you got blanks everywhere, but at least you know, the unknown, unknowns. So they're just known unknowns. Now, you can start populating those blanks where you know where the blanks are in that C V template. You can set up a plan and I'd really recommend having a five year plan. Now, certain things really achievable in medical school, like ordering, like arranging a regional teaching program takes a lot of points. Um But that's a lot hard to do when you're a junior doctor. Um closing a loop audit should be doable as an undergrad, but it's definitely a doddle when you're an F one or an F two, starting research as a foundation doctor and making sure it comes through to a publication is incredibly hard as a junior doctor. So that is something that you want to start as an undergrad. So think about the personal speci specifications and marketing matrices for court surgical training and high surgical training. And think right, I need to get to this point and play the spread in seven years time, which means for the next five years each year, I need to do this, this and this to hit the trajectory that I want to achieve. So have a five year plan review every year and add on the next year that you need to get to the end. Um fundamental. Um This can be tricky that the advice I'd give you is go to a consultant and find out who's the most motivated registrar. The probably going to a consultant is they often want you to do a project which is kind of their pet interest and you get a shite project, which goes absolutely nowhere because they're interested in it, but they don't see the bigger picture. Usually the most motivated registrar is thinking about how to make sure they take boxes on their CV and appraisal and a ERCP. So they'll probably be quite selective about what projects they are involved with. So if you can tack onto one of those, you probably in a good, good, good area to be mentored. Um If you're really good and successful and motivated and you bash projects out in no time whatsoever. You're going to get a lot of opportunities thrown at you. Now, the problem with that is there's lots of crap out there. So you got to really be selective about what you say yes to and have a really high threshold about thinking whether a project actually scores you the points that you need on your CV to get through your training kind of hurdles. If it's not going to contribute to your five year plan and your C V, then possibly isn't the thing to say yes to. So be really careful about what you do say yes and no to and that is all about how you work smart and not hard. Um I'm someone who, it feels like a juggle a lot of things, but I think it's possible because I work smart and organized and I think that that's quite critical to success in academic surgery. And before that kind of go onto my speciality stuff, does anyone have any questions? I'll try and look at the messages. Uh Is it still okay for you? Teach society than the surgical societies? Yes, it's fine. Uh Did you mention that your protected academic time was five years? Yes. So it was in bits. So one year as be meds, I uh four months as an academic foundation program, nine months as a uh a CF one year as a hee leadership fellow in two years as a uh doing a phd uh, any other questions about kind of academic surgery before I kind of go on to, uh, clinical stuff? Well, I'll let you populate stuff and I'll keep moving forwards in the interest of staying to time. Let's click back. So there were a few people of interest in orthopedics but I appreciate, not everyone was, um, but the beautiful orthopedics is, it's got eight subspecialties and actually I liked all of them. I liked all of them to some degree, but there's plenty of bits of operations that I really didn't like. And the key thing is look at the personality of a specialty. And that's true for orthopedics and any other specialty because the nature of each specialty is actually quite different, the nature of the clients, you're treating the nature of the pathologies, whether it's kind of a banging a hip and then it's done whether you want a long term relationship or are you more of a preservative kind of person or you want to restore function? Um, all the specialties and subspecialties have a personality to think about what you want out of the nature of the surgery and specialty and the type of patients' and what your type of work life balance is going to be, for example. And although it's incredibly rare, you're operating out of hours. So if you're on call, you're, you're not really going to be disturbed at night. The registrars kind of got the fort if you're gonna get called in this for something really horrific. Um, uh, and pediatrics really, really rare that you have to do anything out of hours because no one really does anything stupid after 11 o'clock in the kids hospital. Uh, for trauma. Anyway. Um, so just think about different specialties, but broadly, six years of specialist registrar training and for, for orthopedic, certainly two years of fellowship. Um, so I picked spinal surgery because it had facets of all the other orthopedic jobs that I really liked. So my very first job was trauma and limb recon and spine has the equivalent parts in that it has trauma like this uh uh cervical fracture dislocation. Uh but it has deformity has scoliosis. You've got deformity planning, which you get in limb reconstruction as well. And I really enjoyed the complex deformity planning. Um part of pediatrics spine. My second job was hand and wrist and actually I quite like the really small fiddly nature of some of the hand surgery that we used to do. And spinal surgery has that too. It has the micro diskectomies and a cvs which you do down a scope, really small tubular access, doing very, very fine intricate things which make a big clinical difference. The next job was arthroplasty and especially revision arthroplasty, which was just really macro you could lay open an entire femur and replace a femur. Um And actually seeing that anatomy in, in, in, in gross sense was quite amazing. And you get the same thing with spinal deformity correction, you get to expose a spine almost top to bottom. Um, when, when you're doing it and it is, it is quite a satisfying operation to do a big, big operation which takes a few hours. Uh, the, the next job after that was was pediatric orthopedics. And, uh, most people happy working with kids. I love working with kids. I think they're just incredibly resilient. Their bone biology is awesome. Um And I really enjoy the complexities of having to deal with the parents. Most people want to avoid that, but I, I like the commons challenge of getting them to understand why you're making the decisions you are about their child. Um And you, you get to see the consequences of the decisions you make long term. Um So you might have a congenital patient who you make a decision when they're a few months old and you'll have that patient until they're in their mid twenties and then you start to wind back and retire and you really see whether you made the right call or not. And so, quite frankly, I don't understand why anyone wouldn't do pediatric spinal deformity. It's just awesome, but I appreciate it's not for everyone. There are some real high risk elements to it. Um Correcting curves like that um uh comes with huge risk of paralysis on table death. Um So it can be life altering when it goes wrong. So you got to make sure that you can deal with the consequences of when things go wrong. But over time you figure out whether you can handle it or not. So I can see you kind of my spinal research and I just picked out 33 studies that I'm involved with, which is basis B A B Q and A brace DC. So the basis studies a massive NIH are funded RCT where we're randomizing kids with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, two standard NHS treatment, which is a full time brace, like the one, the left or a nighttime brace, which is the one on the right there differently designed braces and not just the same brace one less. But we're basically trying to see whether the nighttime brace is a non inferior to a full time brace because the problem with the full time braces, we're asking teenage girls to where this bulky plastic thing for 2020 hours a day for the best part of three years in their teenage life and they really hate it and adherence is a real issue. So we're seeing with a nighttime brace, which we think is probably non inferior is truly the case and hopefully the trial will show that over the next 10 years. Um This is kind of part of my phd. Um So, um quite neat for an orthopod, I guess, but it's behavioral change theory. Um So we're looking at whether we can predict kid's behavior. Uh and adherence of treatment prior to exposure to the treatment. And I'm using a theory called protection motivation theory. We did a load of interviews, extracted load of themes came up with a 32 question questionnaire which we're hoping is going to be able to predict at the time of diagnosis, whether a kid will aware not wear their brace. And that's gonna be validated through a trial. It will be the first time a kind of prediction tool of this nature has ever been validated with adherence data, which is objective because the braces or have little thermal sensors in. So, you know exactly how many hours they were a date and also will be correlated correlated with clinical outcome, whether whether they were not to have surgery or not. So, potentially a bit of the holy grail, whether you can tell a kid who's going to stick to treatment or not, either that or it won't work and I'll reshow methadone medicine logically that it can't be done. And then my last phd kind of section is a discrete choices commitment. So this is all about decision science. Um uh I'm basically giving a loan of patient's 12 paired scenarios to pick between brace A and brace be which have all got subtle variations. And it helps clinicians understand what patient's attitude to risk is. Um We often give them a treatment because we know that's clinically the right thing to do. But pragmatically that may not be exactly how they take up that take, take up that treatment option and actually understanding patient attitude to risk and understanding why they made the choices they do means you can give them far more bespoke treatment. Uh and a far better like risk profile of, of their, of their condition. Um So, yeah, some somewhat unusual methodologies for, for an orthopod. Um But yeah, it's really interesting to me and if anyone is particularly nerdier, more than welcome to ask me more about that and, and that's, that's me. Hang on seven o'clock, I think, happy to take any questions about uh research or spinal surgery. Uh anything stop presenting, sorry to interrupt you, but I've just posted the feedback form. So you guys gonna phone that up. Um That would be great as well. I think somebody asked, what do you mean by publications that are pub mitt side herbal? I think that was much earlier on, wasn't it from your own presentation? I think or might be Mitchell's? But I can't, if not, I can answer ABM excitable uh publications. So, um a certain number of certain journals are pub med. Uh I Toble and some aunt, a lot of the major generals are, but the real weird obscure ones or the kind of monthly editorials from certain societies aren't pub med excitable. So what you really need to be able to do on, on your kind of CV is be able to put your kind of reference for whatever you published with its PUBMED ID. And it hasn't got a pub med I D. It probably won't count in your national recruitment applications or you will get less points for it. So just when you're thinking about designing research, think about where this is going to end up long term and what journals likely to take it. Um And it sometimes it's worth even contacting the journal in advance saying we're thinking about running this study. Is that something you'd be interested in supporting and publishing in the future? It gives you an idea if you're heading in the right direction. But fundamentally, you need to get that pub mid I D and uh to, to prove that it's, it's a, it's a journal that you, that counts for points in your application. I guess I had one actually, which was uh with regards to your MSC and your phd. Um Did you have to fund them yourself or did, did you get any help? Um in terms of funding? Yes. So for the MSC, that was surgical innovation one that uh so when I did the Haiti Leadership Fellowship, it come, comes to the study budget. So leadership fellowships for Yorkshire and Humber are amazing. I think I have about an extra slide on it. Um I do have an exercise on it way more organized than I thought. Uh Let me see if I can actually don't worry, I'll just talk about it. Um So yeah, it comes to the 80 leadership fellowships come with a uh study budget. Now, it can probably fund most of a PG certain which has done a long distance. But for me, I did not want to do a, a shite PG cert, which actually just with a line on the C V. But actually I actually got to a stage where because I was a registrar, my next interview job application was going to be from a consultant job I was actually more interested in learning content. So for me, I put that funding towards the MSC and social innovation, which cost a lot, lot more than just doing a P D cert, it was a proper face to face one and but the content was really good. So I actually got a lot more out of it. But yeah, it costs a reasonable amount but it was subsidized by the fact that had a study budget for the H D leadership fellowship for the phd. So an A C F is meant to be so you can design your fellowship application, your kind of clinical research training fellowship application to be funded to the your phd. Now my A C F was in genetic. So I was, I was extracting D N A R N N protein from cartilage samples from oa knees. And actually the project I was putting together um I didn't really believe in it. I didn't really want to do mask model stuff. And actually for me, clinical research car more interesting to me than, than basic signs or laboratory research. So I was kind of glad that I didn't, that didn't land if it did, I would have gone through the clinical lectureship kind of pathway. But what ended up happening was I went to S T three and I just loved being a clinician, loved being a surgeon, loved just being trained and I spent 3.5 years just getting, being a really good registrar and having a good pair of hands. And through that, I actually understood what I want to do clinically long term and it wasn't arthroplasty. I realized that I love spine and then kind of stars aligned in terms of the fact that uh one of the surgeons wanted to develop this grant application. Uh I have to write it and then once we landed the big grant for the trial, we thought about right, how am I gonna be able to do a phd? And then I designed a study which sat within the trial. Um And for that, I put in my own grant application. Now it isn't a NIH our uh or M R C or uh a big one. Welcome trust or anything like that. But it's funded by a specialty uh supported by a bee Srf. Now that covered most of my salary, which is a lot more than paying for a phd student normally. But I decided to make that up by doing the fellowship at the same time. So, what I wouldn't recommend anyone does that because I'm essentially doing two full time jobs at the same time. University doesn't know I've got clinical job, clinical job doesn't know I do do your phd, but it means that I'm not taking a hit in my salary. I'm operating loads and doing something super niche that no one ever gets to do as a reg. Um but it has required a bit of being organized, but because I have got a grant, it protects me for, for like a block of time where I'm not doing anything clinical and just writing up. So that's what part is part funded by my, my own grant. Perfect. Thank you. That, that makes a lot of sense. And I think we had one question. Um, are there any prominent scholarships, medical students can apply for my medical school? Advertisers? Very few. Yes. So do you mean scholarships to do integrated degrees or do you mean little pots of funds? So you can go to a conference? What do you mean? So when I did the meds might be meds, I, I had, I got a Bursary with it. I don't think that's common anymore. I'm certainly making sure for our BSC integrated BS CS and be med size whilst we haven't got a Bursary for them for their kind of maintenance. We're making sure that we have funds internally to pay for them to go to conference and courses. But there are, if you keep your ears to the ground, ways to tap into little pots of money to support you to go into conferences and whatnot. So, yeah, when you, when you pick, when you pick, when you pick your beam inside or wherever you're integrating and pick a really good project with a good supervisor and a good institution. It's all the standard piece person place project professor. Uh Make sure you pick, pick all the right stuff there and that includes making sure that they have thought about how they're going to finance you through your outputs if you like. So yeah, conferences and medical school fees. Not for insulate, not for insulating. Uh yeah, we'll call the medical school fees but certainly conferences. There are parts of money, but you just need to go to the right organisations and yeah, your supervisors should know. Well, they should have internal funds if they're, if they're, if they're organized. I know Sheffield usually there's like 100 lbs for a national conference. Um So you can get a little pots of money for that. I had a question. Um So you mentioned obviously it is easy to get involved in research when you are doing your undergrad then as a, as a junior doctor. So what advice would you give to students who are in the undergrad at the moment? How do they get started? Um What should they do? Yes. So, um, kind of more I mentioned before I go to a consultant and find out who the best registrar is in the department or whatever. Um, try and pick a project which has a clear output and make sure that whoever is designed has thought about that. If they are kind of making up on the fly, it's not a complete project. So don't, don't say yes to that. Um, uh What I would say is get involved really early, like you can't start too early. Um I always get a little bit nervous when finally is kind of come asking me for a research project and I realize that I can't really change your trajectory if you're not already heading in a good direction with a strong CV. If you're thinking that within one year or you're finally a medical school, you can do a load of stuff, which is gonna kind of massively change. Your trajectory is possibly a bit unrealistic, not impossible, but it's difficult. So just start really, really early and chip that stuff and make sure everything turns into an output in some way or form and, and surround yourself by different mentors. So I know that I am obviously very skewed towards academic achievements because that's my thing. But I fully appreciate you can get through a lot of training uh without being a hard core academic. You don't, you definitely don't need to do that. But at the moment national recruitment is really biased towards academia and it might change is um they need to figure out a way to score people somehow. Unfortunately, stuff on your C V is the way they do that and the things that separates people, most people can take off teaching and audit. The thing that separates people more often than not is academic achievements, the research achievements. So um yeah, get going on those early because it's hard to get something from start to finish from foundation onwards. Can keep the bat. Does anyone have any last minute questions? Pop them in the chat? Cool. Seems like uh all questions have been answered. So if anyone's got any other questions, feel free to contact me on Twitter or email. Uh whether um but all these guys, thanks for having me. Thank you everyone. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining a year ahead. Can you one if you end this? I didn't really? Oh yeah, leave. She would just leave then I think you and Phil and uh yeah, thank you everyone for joining. Thank you. Bye bye bye bye.