I can't get my head around pharmacology

Book of the week (BotW) = The Darwin Economy by Prof Frank Being a medical student and wanna-be-surgeon, I am naturally very competitive. I know exactly where I want to end up in life. I want to be a surgeon at a major unit doing research, teaching and management, as well as many other things. To reach this goal in a rational way I, and many others like me, need to look at what is required and make sure that we tick the boxes. We must also out-compete every other budding surgeon with a similar interest. Medicine is also a dog-eat-dog world when it comes to getting the job you want. Luckily you can head off into almost any field you find interesting, as long as you have the points on your CV to get access to the training. In recent years, the number of med students has increased, but so has the competition for places. The number of FY1 jobs has increased but so has the competition for good rotations. The number of consultant posts has increased, but so has the competition for the jobs. To even be considered for an interview for a consultant surgeon post these days a candidate (hopefully my future self) will have to demonstrate an excellent knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pathology and demography. They will need to have competent surgical skills and have completed all of the hours and numbers of procedures. To further demonstrate this they will need to have gone on extra-curricular courses and fellowships. They will also need to show that they can teach and have been doing so regularly. They must now also have an understanding of medical leadership and have a portfolio of projects. Finally, they will have had to tick the research box, with posters, publications, oral presentations and research degrees. That’s a long list of tick boxes and guess what? It has been getting longer! I regularly attend a surgical research collaborative meeting in Birmingham. Many of those surgeons didn’t even get taught about research at medical school or publish anything until they were registrars. Now even to get onto a good Core Training post you need to have at the very least some posters in your chosen field and probably a minimum of a publication. That’s a pretty big jump in standards in just 15 years. In two generations the competition has increased exponentially. Why is that? Prof Frank explains economic competition in Darwinian terms. His insights apply equally well to the medical training programme. It’s all about your relative performance compared to your peers and the continual arms race for the best resources (training posts). However, the catch is, if everyone ups their performance by the same amount then you all work harder for no more advantage for anyone, except for the first few people who made the upgrade. The majority do not benefit but are in fact harmed by this continual arms race. I believe that this competition will only get worse as each new year of med students tries to keep up and surpass the previous cohort. This competition will inevitably lead to a greater time commitment from the students with no potential gain. Everything we do is relative to everyone else. If we up our game, we will outperform the competition, until they catch up with us and then relatively we are no better off but are working harder. Why is this relevant? I know everyone will want to select “the best” candidate, but in medicine the “best” candidate doesn’t really exist because we are all almost equally capable of doing the role, once we have had the training. So there is no point us all working ourselves into the ground for a future job, if all our hard work won’t pay off for most of us anyway. But we can’t make these choices as individuals because if one of us says that “I am not going to play the game. I am going to enjoy my free time with my friends and family”, that person won’t get the competitive job because everyone else will out-perform them. We have to tackle this issue as a cohort. How do we ensure that we don’t work ourselves into the ground for nothing? Collectively as medical students and trainees we should ask the BMA and Royal Collages to set out a strict application process that means once candidates have met the minimum requirements, there is no more points for additional effort. For instance, the application form for a surgical consultant post should only have space to include 5 peer-reviewed publications. That way it wouldn’t necessarily matter if you had 5 or 50 publications. This limit may seem counter-intuitive and will possibly work against the highly competitive high achievers, but it will have a positive effect on everyone else’s life. Imagine if you only had to write 5 papers in your career to guarantee a chance at a job, instead of having to write 25. All that extra time you would have had to invest in extra-curricular research can now be used more productively by you to achieve other life goals, like more time with your family or more patient contact or even more time in theatre perfecting your skills. If you were selecting candidates for senior clinicians, would you rather pick an all round doctor who has met all of the requirements and has a balanced work-life balance or a neurotic competitor who hasn’t slept in 8 years and is close to a breakdown? Being a doctor is more than a profession, it is a life-style choice but we should try to prevent it becoming our entire lives.  

Does spending more time on the wards as medical students actually produce more competent junior doctors?  

Introduction Over the last three years there has been a rapid increase in the amount of medical education resources on the web. The contributors tend to fall into three main areas: Individuals or small groups producing material Large organisations / universities producing material Organisations creating sites (such as Meducation) which are one-stop-shops for content and act as a portal for other sites. Individuals Most students are required to produce and present a certain amount of educational material during their studies. Many, therefore, end up with PowerPoints and documents on various topics. The more ambitious may create videos: either animations in flash, or more real-life videos that demonstrate something such as an examination technical. Some of these students enjoy this so much that they have developed sites dedicated to such material. Sites such as Podmedics and Surgery and Medicine are examples of students who have grouped together to upload their work to a central place where it can be shared in the community. They advertise on Facebook and Twitter and gain a small following. Large Organisations And Universities Some organisations have realised that there is a market for the production of multimedia resources and have invested time and money into producing them. Companies such as MD Kiosh and ORLive run subscription services for high quality videos and have developed full time businesses around this work. Universities have also realised the potential for creating high quality media and some, such as the University of California and the University of Wisconsin, have invested into television-like streams, trying to tap in to the students natural viewing habits. As time goes on it seems likely that most medical education will move away from textbooks and towards the multimedia resources. There will always be a need for the written word but it is likely that it will become more incorporated into other forms of media, such as presentations and annotated videos. One-Stop-Shops The final, and possibly most influential type of contributor is the social network / portal site. Here, all the information from around the web is culminated in one place, where users can go to find what they are looking for These sites act as portals for all the other types of site and help spread their reach well beyond their local community. Here at Meducation, we have contributors from over 100 countries and pride ourselves on making easy-to-find resources for everyone. As time goes on and more users start to discover portal sites, more traffic will flood to the sites they support and the whole infrastructure can grow incrementally.  

I recently read a question on meducation posted around a year ago, the jist of which was “as a medical student, is it too early to start developing commitment to a specialty?” I.e. “even though I haven’t graduated yet, should I start building a portfolio of experience and evidence to show that specialty X is what I really want to do?” MMC revolutionised (for better or worse) the medical career structure forcing new graduates to decide on a career path much earlier. Many have appreciated the clear delineation of their career pathway. Others have found the 15 month period between leaving university and applying for specialty training too short to make an informed decision (just ask the 10% of FY2s that took a career break last year (i)). Whether right or wrong, there is now less time to rotate round ‘SHO’ jobs, decide on a career and build a CV capable of winning over an interview panel. You’ll probably find you’re in one of 2 camps at university: Those who are absolutely 110% certain there is nothing they want to do, ever, other than specialty X, or Those who really like specialty X, but also like specialties W, Y and Z and haven't made up their minds (A few people find themselves feeling they don’t want to be part of any medical career, but that’s for another post.) Students identifying with the first statement are usually concerned they will not get enough general experience, or that they will be stuck with their decision if they change their minds later on. Those who are leaning more towards statement 2 may not build as strong a body of evidence for any one specialty; however it’s possible to get involved in activities either relevant to a few career options, or several specialty-specific activities and subsequently edit the CV for a specific interview. The key message is that whether you think you have your career mapped out or not, medical school is the perfect time to start collecting evidence that you’re interested in a career in a particular specialty: time for extra-curricular activities only becomes scarcer when you have a full time job complete with working long days, nights and weekends. Your experiences at medical school can then be supplemented with taster weeks, teaching and judicious use of your study budget for training days and conferences; bear in mind that all specialties allow at least 3 years* following FY2 before starting specialty training which can be used for gaining further experience (but be prepared to justify and defend your actions). It’s also important to consider the manner in which individual specialties require such a commitment to be demonstrated: In general terms, the more niche and/or competitive the specialty, the more they will want you to demonstrate that you a) really know what the job entails and b) have made a concerted effort to further your knowledge of the subject. To get a job in neurosurgery for example, which is not only niche but had a completion ratio of 4.9 in 2013(ii) you’ll need to have gone to courses relevant to neurosurgery and have achievements related to the specialty such as a neurosurgical elective, attachment or taster experience(iii). Some specialties assess commitment in a variety of situations e.g. the radiology interview this year had stations on the general overview and future of radiology as a career, a CV based demonstration of commitment to specialty as well as a station requiring the interpretation of images. General Practice on the other hand which in its very nature is very broad, at no point allocates marks specifically for commitment to specialty (or anything else on a CV for that matter) as it is entirely dependent on an exam (SJTs and clinical questions) and skill-based stations at a selection centre. The person specification* details what is expected and desirable as demonstration of commitment in each specialty. So, how do you actually show you’re committed to a specialty? It may be pretty obvious but try to get a consistent and well-rounded CV. Consider: • Joining a student committee or group for your specialty. If there isn't one at your university, find some like-minded people and start one • Asking the firms you work for if you can help with an audit/research even if data collection doesn’t sound very interesting • Finding a research project (e.g. as part of a related intercalated or higher degree) • Prizes and examinations relevant to the specialty • Developing a relevant teaching programme • Selecting your selected study modules/components, elective and dissertation with your chosen specialty in mind • Going to teaching or study days aimed at students at the relevant Royal College Remember it’s not just what you’ve done but also what you’ve learnt from it; get into a habit of reflecting on what each activity has helped you achieve or understand. This is where most people who appear to have the perfect CV come unstuck: There will always be someone who has more presentations and publications etc. etc. but don’t be put off that it means they are a dead cert for the job. Whatever you do, make sure you have EVIDENCE that you’ve done it. Become a bit obsessive. Trust me, you forget a lot and nothing counts if you can’t prove it. Assessing commitment to specialty aims to highlight who really understands and wants a career in that specialty. From my own recent experience however, just identifying experiences explicitly related to a specific specialty ignores the transferable and clinically/professionally/personally important skills one has that would make them a successful trainee. I’d be very interested in your views on ‘commitment to specialty’: for example do you think the fact someone has 20 papers in a given specialty means they are necessarily the best for the job? Or are you planning to take a year out post-FY2 to build on your CV to gain more experience? Let us know! References *See person specifications for specialty-specific details at http://specialtytraining.hee.nhs.uk/specialty-recruitment/person-specifications-2013/ i. http://www.foundationprogramme.nhs.uk/download.asp?file=F2_career_destination_report_November_2013.pdf ii. http://specialtytraining.hee.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/475/2013/03/Specialty-Training-2013.pdf iii. http://specialtytraining.hee.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/475/2013/03/2014-PS-NEUROSURGERY-ST1-1.02.pdf