Specialty training

Which specialty?

To find out more about what different specialties involve, go to the Specialty Pages of www.medicalcareers.nhs.uk .

This site, run by KSS Deanery on behalf of all the Deaneries, gives detailed information about training pathways, competition ratios, what to expect in the specialty and so on. There are also short videos made by West Midlands Deanery of specialists talking about their job and what it entails.

Check out the College site for the specialty you're interested in as these sites are developing all the time. The Royal College of Surgeons of England, for instance, has a whole section devoted to Training and within that has a set of biographical careers stories .

Recruitment

For information on how to apply for specialty training in England there are comprehensive pages on the Medical Specialty Training (England) website. These include:

Quick guide to specialty training 2010

National person specifications for posts

Guidance for applicants from overseas

Links to medical specialty and recruitment pages for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Transition

New specialty training programmes began in 2007, with measures in place to ensure the doctors in the existing training system would not be disadvantaged. The period of time from 2007 until the last SpR receives their Certificate of Completion of Training under the old system is called ‘Transition’ and will last several years. If you are an SpR you are likely to carry on as before and receive a Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT)

If you want to train abroad or take time out to work abroad

If you want your time abroad to count towards your training it is essential that you that you obtain prospective approval from  PMETB in good time before you go. It's possible you won't get recognition for that period of training but may decide to go anyway, even though you may gain your CCT a little later. Take advice, however it is unlikely that your time away will create long lasting career difficulties and may give you valuable experience that enhances your skills as a doctor.

Check out the special section on working abroad on www.medicalcareers.nhs.uk.

Furtther resources

• BMJ Careers is a national source of UK medical jobs and careers advice. The site  incorporates all recruitment and course ads from the BMJ, the full archive of current and past material from Career Focus, a contacts and links section and other career related resources.
  
• BMJ Careers Advice Zone is a service within BMJ Careers. They publish a selection of your career queries together with responses from other readers and their panel of more than 200 experienced advisers, who are mostly career focus authors. There are around 80 topics covering a whole range of issues, so whether it's choosing your career, what training to do, or how to deal with work-related health problems or discrimination, the Advice Zone should be able to help.

• The fully updated, third edition of the book So You Want to be a Brain Surgeon, by Simon Eccles and Stephan Sanders (2008), is a good basic guide to all the medical specialties. Each specialty is covered and practical advice offered on the personal qualities needed, level of competition, salaries available, stress levels etc. Job summary tables allow at-a-glance comparisons to be made between different jobs. Includes developments in medical education since the Tooke report and changes to the structure of training.