Hello hello! My name is Jean and I’m currently in my third year of Medicine at Manchester. I am the co-lead of International Insights and in this entry I will be telling you about medical portfolios.
People seem to go on about how certain things such as research and teaching will benefit your portfolio, but what exactly is a portfolio and why should you even care about it? This entry will serve as a brief introduction to medical portfolios, in preparation for some exciting entries that we have coming up :)
Q1) What is a portfolio?
A medical portfolio is a record of the evidence supporting your “personal and professional skills, knowledge, and competencies”. (1) A portfolio provides more detail about the items in your CV, acting as a visual representation of your CV contents.
Prior to the pandemic, a lot of interviews required physical portfolios (binders filled with the required evidence) but these days most applications will ask candidates to perform a self-assessment of their portfolio, then upload relevant evidence to justify why they have given themselves a certain score in a domain.
Q2) Why do portfolios matter?
As a medical student, the portfolio is probably most important in terms of future job applications, but it is also used in revalidation and relicensing. (2) Postgraduate programmes such as Core Surgical Training can be very competitive to enter, so by maximising the scores you can get for your portfolio, you are increasing your chances of a successful application.
I’ve had doctors tell me before that it’s a lot easier to win prizes and develop your portfolio as a medical student for various reasons:
There are a lot of medical student prizes out there and the competition for these is generally not as fierce as those for doctors.
You probably have more time on your hands as a medical student! That’s hard to believe but it’s actually quite true.
Q3) What can count towards a portfolio?
The specific things that count towards a portfolio will depend on the specific programme you are applying to. For example, surgery-specific items e.g. the amount of surgical experience you have and taking the MRCS Part A count towards the “Commitment to Surgery” domain in Core Surgical Training portfolios. (3)
I also know that the application to join specialty training in certain surgical specialties requires that your publications are in that specific area. However, most applications accept any Medicine-related work - the best thing to do is to check the requirements for the specific programme you are interested in.
The general areas that would count towards a portfolio are:
Additional degrees - note that additional degrees do not count towards the normal Foundation Programme application starting 2023 but they still count towards other applications.
Publications
Presentations (oral and poster)
Prizes
Quality Improvement/Audit
Leadership
Teaching
To score maximum points on a domain, specific conditions have to be met which will be detailed in the guidance provided for self-assessment. I have included an example below of the guidance on scoring presentations for Core Surgical Training interviews.
Taken from (3).
Q4) How to start working on your portfolio now
A lot of medical students (including myself) are now starting to work on their portfolios at an earlier stage because of how competitive applications can get. While I don’t agree with this overall phenomenon (I could write a whole other entry talking about this), it is important not to disadvantage yourself, especially if you have an interest in a specific programme.
Find out what you need to improve your portfolio. Are there any areas where you do not have experience that would count towards points in a specific domain?
Start working on things targeted towards any areas/programmes of interest. It is probably easiest to start with Core Surgical Training or Internal Medicine Training depending on your interests. I didn't find one for GP training based on my research, please correct me if I’m wrong!
It is not only important to start gaining these experiences now, but also to get evidence of it! An example might be a letter from an organisation detailing your involvement with them for a leadership role or a copy of a conference leaflet/schedule with you listed as a presenter.
The specific criteria and number of points you can score in a domain may vary from year to year but the self-assessment criteria can act as a good point of reference - these can be found freely on the Internet.
Thank you for reading my entry! I hope it was useful and keep your eyes out for our upcoming entries! We would love to have you write about your portfolio-related experiences (or any of your choice!) on International Insights, please fill in this form if interested.
I write about research/academia and my experiences on my own website and can be found on Twitter or LinkedIn.
References
1. Douglas H, West C. Creating a good portfolio. BMJ [Internet]. 2009 [cited 10 February 2022];:b811. Available from: https://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b811
2. Developing your portfolio [Internet]. Health Careers. 2022 [cited 10 February 2022]. Available from: https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/developing-your-health-career/developing-your-portfolio
3. Core Surgery Interview - Core Surgery Application Self-Assessment [Internet]. Core Surgery Interview. 2022 [cited 10 February 2022]. Available from: https://coresurgeryinterview.com/Core-Surgery-Training-Interview/Application-Self-Assessment.php
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