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Maximising your medical ST3 & ST4 application score: Publications

Regardless which higher medical specialty you apply for, the application score will determine whether you’re shortlisted for a face-to-face interview, and also play a part in the final decision whether or not you’ll get the job.

The following table (source: Application scoring (st3recruitment.org.uk)) denotes how the publication section of the application is scored.

Aside from the few doctors who are postgraduate medics with research experience, most people who have come straight from secondary school and university will have had little opportunity to publish anything significant.

The lowest hanging fruit in my opinion would be the option of “I am co-author of one PubMed-cited original research publication” which would potentially yield you 5/8 application points. I would recommend approaching one of the academic consultants, preferably in the specialty you’re applying for, in the medical school affiliated to your hospital.

Offer your time, service and any ideas for projects but even if you don’t have any ideas you should still approach them. Those without any research experience can still offer up time for data collection for retrospective studies. Those with statistics experience can participate in data analysis and those who are good at medical writing can do that portion of the process.

As a co-author (as opposed to first author) you might be expected to be involved heavily in one area of the process (e.g. data collection) and small amounts in the other areas, whilst the first author usually would be doing most of the heavy lifting. Try to approach your academic consultant or professor quite a few months or even one year before your application as data collection, data analysis, manuscript writing, and ultimately the publication ‘dance’ back and forth between reviewers and yourself during the peer review process takes quite a bit of time.

Do note that there is a difference in the application scoring between PubMed cited and non-PubMed publications so check with your team before embarking on any projects.

Next on the list for low hanging fruit perhaps will be “I am first author, joint-first author, or co-author of one PubMed-cited other publication (or in press) such as an editorial, review, case report, letter, etc” which would potentially net 3/8 but again the clear emphasis is on the publication being PubMed cited. Case reports jump out as the best option for most who will be working in the clinical environment encountering interesting cases regularly.

If getting published is really a struggle then the penultimate option of getting published in a non-PubMed cited journal and garnering 2/8 points is still useful.

With a little amount of effort 2 – 5 points should be quite achievable for the publication section. This article has deliberately left out the options that could offer 6 – 8 points as they require significantly more effort for relatively not much gain.

If you enjoyed the article, this audiobook copy of The Comprehensive Guide to Clinical Research can be completely free if you follow that link. All the best.

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