Core surgery recruitment and Academic Clinical Fellowship

With the interviews for core surgical training underway, there's a lot of tension at work place.

Having secured an academic clinical fellowship, I have the luxury of sitting back and enjoying the rest of my foundation year 2 training. Sadly I'm not particularly enjoying the care of elderly attachmet as most involves countless paperwork and a lot of babysitting patients while they wait for nursing/residential home placement.

So what is academic clinical fellowship? Many have asked me this and it's surprising how little people know of such oppurtunity.

It is essentially a specialty training programme with protected time for research. Most candidates will spend the first 3 years doing a pre-pilot research with the aim of applying for an externally funded pHd or an MD. On completion of the pHd/MD the candidates will slot back into higher specialty training. It is essentially a run through training in which all candidates entering ST1 training is almost guaranteed a CCT (Certificate of Completion of Training).

Now you may think, then why don't many people apply for it?
The same reason I mentioned above; not many are aware of such opportunities, and it is also only suitable for those who are interested in research and academia. Competition is fierce with less than 10 ACF in surgery available in the whole of UK at ST1 or ST2 level.

My next blog will be about how to prepare your portfolio for ACF/ core surgery, how to fill out applications, and how to utilise the time to get the most out of foundation training.

Stay tuned.
Romesh