CAREER IN PLASTIC SURGERY 

Higher Surgical Training, ST 3

The application process for ST3 is as below. The information provided is adapted from BMJ Careers guide written by Patel (2014). 

• Eligibility to apply—Evidence of full General Medical Council licence, English language skills, right to work in the UK, details of criminal convictions or fitness to practise issues, and competences and experience.

• Referees—Applicants must provide three consultant referees. One must be the most recent or current supervisor and the other two can be any other consultant including research supervisors.

• Professional qualifications—These include additional degrees, certificates, or diplomas as well as ongoing qualifications currently being undertaken. Certain awards can also be listed here. Most importantly candidates must show primary medical degree details and membership of the Royal College of Surgeons.

• Full employment history—Make sure you list the correct job dates and supervisor details. Give justifications for any gaps in employment.

• Clinical experience—More weighting is given to achievements if it is less than five years since you gained your primary medical qualifications. You will then need to grade yourself in terms of your ability to perform surgical procedures from A (no experience) to E (the highest level of experience) for: 

  • Hand trauma (which covers tendon repairs, nerve repairs, and fractures)

  • Burns (covering burn wound management of <5% to > 20% and burns surgery <1% excise and split thickness skin graft to >10% excise and graft)

  • Skin cancer management (covering excise and close skin lesion to excise and close with a large flap)

• Procedures—You must include numbers of each type of procedure, including whether they were performed independently by the trainee without a consultant trainer present, supervised with a consultant trainer scrubbed in for the procedure to help with assistance, or supervised with a consultant trainer not scrubbed in to assist with the procedure but merely to watch over it. You must also state what evidence you will bring in the interview to justify your selection of competency and numbers, such as a surgical logbook or letters of evidence from consultants.

• Experience and commitment—Detail how many work based assessments you can show for plastic surgery and grade yourself from A (no evidence) to E (greater than 95% of assessments above average for plastic surgery and more than 30 assessments per training year).

• Audit and management—Grade yourself from A (little or no evidence) to E (one audit per year of training and more than 50% that have a cycle completed). You will have to list your audits, your role, and whether they have been re-audited, including the outcomes of each.

• Teaching—Grade yourself from A (no evidence) to E (editor of a book).

• Management and leadership—Grade yourself from A (little or no evidence) to E (national committee member).

• Academic achievement—Grade yourself from A (nil) to E (MD or PhD, for medically related and medically non-related qualifications)

• Academic prizes—Grade yourself from A (no evidence) to E (international prizes and awards)

• Presentations and publications—List all first author publications in journals cited in PubMed. You can also include publications where you contributed to the paper but were not a listed author. You should then list any non-first author publications or publications not cited in PubMed. Lastly list any case reports or letters where you were the principal author. There is a separate table for any international or national posters or presentations directly related to plastic surgery and those that aren’t.

Use the guides available in Oriel Plastic Surgery. 

Please refer to the CSRNO portfolio checklist for a summary of the portfolio scoring system to ensure that you have included the specific components of your portfolio in your application.