Living the dream of Speciality Training.
As I am near the end of my ST now I thought of sharing this for those who have just got into training.
As you have already joined a run through program you will eventually end up CCTing anyway unless you leave the programme ur-self.
There are various option you can utilise to shape up ur training in accordance with your needs. Everything will depend upon your long term Goals, ambitions or plans for staying in UK.
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Just going through training without batting an eye about anything else and live the dream. A perfectly reasonable approach as u will end up having a CCT anyway.
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Taking time out for research. This can either be in the form of MD or PhD and Opens a lot many doors for ur career and future in areas like Teaching in Medical Schools, Research, NIHR clinical lectureships etc on their own or in addition to ur clinical work.
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Depending upon your speciality, There can be various clinical and skill based fellowships. Remember it is an era of sub speciality and in UK shape of trainig is different from training back home. If you want to do something specific, you will have to spend extra time for that. For example in GI you can work for ( ERCP fellowships, Advanced Endosocpy Fellowships, Advanced Hepatology Fellowships) in Cardio ( Intervention, Imaging, Electrophysiology) etc etc. This will all depend upon what you want to do in ur life ahead and where you want to work eventually as being a super qualified person can limit your options to stick to big centres.
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Management and leadership roles within your speciality ( this is a whole new world with some fascinating work going on).
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There are some extremely charming opportunities for such things in countries like (Canada, USA, Newzealand Australia for trainees in UK programmes) and you end up getting quite handsome salaries eventually, Way higher than in UK.
If you are interested in any of these things you will have to plan early and start working on ur CV for these things as these are quite competitive roles to get into ( you must have realised that things get tougher as you go higher up the ranks).Also you don’t wana leave things too late into your training.
There can be many more options in every speciality besides your clinical work so keep ur options open if you are interested. Sky is the limit….!! Best of Luck.