ST3 job offers – what went wrong?

What a mess!

Many of you will be aware of the trauma and anguish many medics recently went through after applying for their ST3 jobs. For those that don’t here is a brief run down:

By the 26th of April the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and Oriel had sent out jobs offers to all ST3 candidates successful in their job application. Offers were accepted; congratulations were in order, family plans made. Unfortunately for those involved, there was a problem. After individual mark sheets were sent out to applicants an attentive few identified a problem between the scores on the sheet and the scores on Oriel. This led to a general check and ultimately the recall of hundreds of job offers. After several stressful weeks, the process was restarted and job offers were re-sent. It is likely that there will be new jubilation for some, but hurt for others.

Now, obviously, there was a mistake and those that were not marked properly in the original round deserved to get their true score and job. The process should be fair and ultimately those that did best in the interview deserve their job. What rankles is the fact that it ever happened in the first place! A system such as this deserves proper stress testing so that this situation never happens! One can only hope that, for that small minority affected adversely by all this, there is proper compensation delivered where it is required.

Ultimately though it should highlight the necessity to question something that does not seem right! If it had not been for the diligence of a small few, the RCP would likely never have noticed its mistake and many would have been left not getting what they deserved. Preparing for these interviews is key to knowing whether the score you’ve been given matches what you would expect.

Being prepared for these interviews is essential and those that prepare do best. Whilst ST3 applications may seem far away for many of you, what you may not know is that the format is almost identical to the CMT interviews and the same principals apply! 3 stations – 1) Portfolio 2) Clinical Scenario 3) Ethical scenario – albeit with a few tweaks between specialties. The obvious one that can be prepared early is your Portfolio and if you’re thinking of applying this autumn and have not yet found a course provider, you can start putting together now! Over the next few weeks I will be writing several blog posts on preparing your portfolio so check back in for more updates!

I hope everyone is enjoying the last few months of their current rotation.

See you soon!