TSR Doctors' Society Part II

Had a ‘full-blown’ covid patient in A&E, went to ITU. First we’ve had in a long time. My brother works in a nearby hospital and has had several new cases come through in the last few days. Feels like the second peak is starting... anyone else having similar experiences?

Curious to know what other registrar rotas are like. Our current medical senior rota is working one shift somewhere in between 1 in every 2 or 3 weekends (if you include nights). Eg you might work 5 days on a ward and then an afternoon/evening on the Saturday, then be back in Monday for another 5 days. Or 5 ward days and a Sunday morning and then back in for the 5 weekdays. You get the idea. Some times you might work a full weekend with other out of hours shifts and zero days around about it. If you are on a ward block you do not get a zero hour day during the week but do a 6 day/5day/6 day/5 day week sort of pattern. Shifts require you to be in the hospital and working, and are not on call from home. Week day shifts are 9.5 hours and the weekend shifts are a variety of lengths, from 5 to 10 hours long.

Is this level of out hours/weekend commitment normal for a senior middlegrade level medical rota? Hospital is a district general.

I just can't see myself coping with this for any length of time as almost every weekend is written off - either because you are in one day of it, or because you are recovering.

Is JRCTB the best way to go about logging e portfolio stuff during FY3? Or are there cheaper alternatives?

Is JRCTB the best way to go about logging e portfolio stuff during FY3? Or are there cheaper alternatives?

There is in fact a free alternative I asked my new hospital's postgraduate centre to re-allocate me to Horus as a non-training grade. They had to send some emails and it took a bit of chasing up, but eventually it happened so that was quite a bit of money saved compared with signing up for a Royal College portfolio.

This is actually a question I have thought about in the past (and discussed with hubby) - my job is very much a part of maintaining stable mental health for me and I wouldn't even consider stopping work if I won the lottery. I love my job and would potentially drop from 70% LTFT to 60% if money wasn't an issue but otherwise would want to continue working. I have been shielding for the last 3 months and unable to work properly and it has really highlighted how important my job is to me!

Is JRCTB the best way to go about logging e portfolio stuff during FY3? Or are there cheaper alternatives?

Excuse my ignorance - why do you need a portfolio during FY3?

There is in fact a free alternative I asked my new hospital's postgraduate centre to re-allocate me to Horus as a non-training grade. They had to send some emails and it took a bit of chasing up, but eventually it happened so that was quite a bit of money saved compared with signing up for a Royal College portfolio

My FY3 was a full time post and I had an appraisal at the end so this seemed the easiest way of keeping things together. I didn't actually use it that much in the end (certainly not compared with the Foundation Programme with its mandatory 15 reflections per job ) so I didn't want to pay hefty fees.

I did a couple of reflections, a few DOPS, uploaded my teaching bits and bobs, course certificates, pdf of the poster I did and that was that. Certainly not worth paying £169 for.

so you decided yourself how much to do? I think ill just replicate how much I did in foundation years...2 CBD + 3 mini-cex every 4 months with 1 reflection..

so you decided yourself how much to do? I think ill just replicate how much I did in foundation years...2 CBD + 3 mini-cex every 4 months with 1 reflection..

My FY3 was a full time post and I had an appraisal at the end so this seemed the easiest way of keeping things together. I didn't actually use it that much in the end (certainly not compared with the Foundation Programme with its mandatory 15 reflections per job ) so I didn't want to pay hefty fees.

I did a couple of reflections, a few DOPS, uploaded my teaching bits and bobs, course certificates, pdf of the poster I did and that was that. Certainly not worth paying £169 for.

You are going to love GP - the target is 3 reflections per week

I'm not sure why my question about winning the lottery was so troublesome and warranted a report and deletion. I would recommend the one who reported my comment to think more charitably about one and other. The exercise didn't need to be shared on this platform if you didn't need to, it's valuable if you do it in private too (which I encourage!), and if it stimulated a productive discussion then that's fantastic.
@Democracy Hey man, bit of a tangent but I am not an applicant yearning for personal statement fodder, my personal statement was submitted long ago, however if I was then that shouldn't be a problem, right? There's nothing inherently wrong with sharing our perspective on these matters, after all who are aspiring medics going to come to to understand our perspective within this profession if we as a collective treat our experience as sacred secrets? (I'm not saying you do; this was directed more-so towards the person who reported my question).

For context, this was a practice I learnt from a YouTuber Ali Abdaal (an FY3 doctor) who asked many of his colleagues this question "if you won the lottery would you still practice medicine" and received an almost unanimous "Absolutely not, I would be out of this profession within the next minute". Before entering medicine myself all but only one (GP) of the countless doctors I had interacted with expressed that pursuing medicine was not a good idea and instead finance (or any other high-paying profession) would provide me with a much happier life. It seems a relevant conundrum within our community and perhaps it might be valuable to someone if they we were to address it, that's all. But hey.. maybe not.

You are going to love GP - the target is 3 reflections per week

so you decided yourself how much to do? I think ill just replicate how much I did in foundation years...2 CBD + 3 mini-cex every 4 months with 1 reflection..

Hi all =) last time I was here was as an applicant, so it's really lovely to see familiar accounts that helped me back then <3

I just wanted to hear your thoughts on this.
My foundation program was recently changed due to "human error" - the program entered in Oriel earlier in the year had already been allocated. I found out recently that's the case when the new hospital contacted me to sign a contract (I've got new set of rotations in different hospitals, which will now required me to drive 35-40mins rather than a 5 min drive/walk). It seems that there's nothing I/they can do now (although this is from those who made the error in the first place).

Does this happen often during junior doctor training? Deaneries forgetting we are human beings with lives and just change things as they see fit, without even contacting us to tell us there's been an error or trying to mitigate the damage they've caused? I'm not naive, but I just expected better and was expecting to be treated with respect, rather than being essentially told that these rotations meet F1 competency requirements and that's all that matters (though I agree that's the priority, we have an allocation/ranking system for a reason and we work hard to get good scores). Just felt like a slap in the face, esp as I was starting on my dream rotation (a specialty I wanted to explore) with really nice hours, which would've enabled me to do few non-medicine related projects.

Hi all =) last time I was here was as an applicant, so it's really lovely to see familiar accounts that helped me back then <3

I just wanted to hear your thoughts on this.
My foundation program was recently changed due to "human error" - the program entered in Oriel earlier in the year had already been allocated. I found out recently that's the case when the new hospital contacted me to sign a contract (I've got new set of rotations in different hospitals, which will now require me to drive 35-40mins rather than a 5 min drive/walk). It seems that there's nothing I/they can do now (although this is coming from those who made the error in the first place).

Does this happen often during junior doctor training? Deaneries forgetting we are human beings with lives and just change things as they see fit, without even contacting us to tell us there's been an error or trying to mitigate the damage they've caused? I'm not naive, but I just expected better and was expecting to be treated with respect, rather than being essentially told that these rotations meet F1 competency requirements and that's all that matters (though I agree that's the priority, we have an allocation/ranking system for a reason and we work hard to get good scores). Just felt like a slap in the face, esp my first rotation was my dream rotation (a specialty I wanted to explore) with really nice hours, which would've enabled me to do few non-medicine related projects.