F3 Stories by Messly

I have known Mike for a very long time and if you’d told me a decade ago that he’d one day be a Navy Doctor, I’d never have believed it. The carefree and, to put it delicately, untidy Mike that I knew did not seem the type of person to choose the rigid and structured life of a military officer. Yet seeing him now I can completely appreciate how the opportunity has opened up and elevated his life in a way I couldn’t have imagined.

The Royal Navy has taught Mike so many new skills. Not only can he now iron a shirt and make a bed, but he can work confidently under pressure, provide humanitarian support overseas, and protect and preserve the wellbeing of his colleagues and patients in challenging circumstances. He’s also had the opportunity to travel and pursue his own extracurricular hobbies like kite surfing and sky diving.

👉 Topics Discussed

In this episode, Mike shares his rationale behind joining the military and committing to a minimum of five years of military service. He also describes what life is like for Naval doctors, the highs and lows of the job, and what to expect if someone were to join the Royal Navy in their F3 Year.

This episode also includes:

👉 Useful Links

‍‍

This article is part of a wider series of comprehensive guides and information to help doctors ensure their F3 year is a success. We cover everything from initial planning, options for moving abroad, help with finding work, and tips for making the most of the experience.

Click here to visit our F3 Resource Hub to explore the full list of guides and articles.

Kelsey knew she wanted to pursue surgical training as a foundation doctor, but also knew that her 4-month surgical post in F2 wasn’t enough to get her onto a training programme. She needed additional application points that could only be gained on an F3 Year.

Despite securing a Plastic Surgery fellowship for her F3 Year, she was unfortunately unsuccessful in her first CT1 application. Using the lessons that she learned from that application round, she devoted the rest of her F3 and F4 Years to maximizing the application points that she needed to get onto the programme she wanted. By focusing her attention on key areas, and using some insider tips she used her time effectively to successfully meet her career ambitions.

👉 Topics Discussed

In this episode, Kelsey shares with us her tips for using your F3 Year to help get onto a competitive training programme, and pursue your career ambitions.

This episode also includes:

👉 Useful Links

Laura is an F3 doctor currently working in Psychiatry in Jersey. She graduated medical school at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and was thrust into the chaos of working without a break for what were probably the two most difficult years for UK doctors in recent history.

Understandably, she needed a break after finishing foundation training, and she decided to take a few months to travel. As a solo female traveler, Laura explored a number of countries in Central and South America in a once-in-a-lifetime epic adventure.

👉 Topics Discussed

In this episode, Laura shares with us her tips for planning, packing, budgeting, and making lifelong friendships and connections when exploring other cultures and countries alone.

This episode also includes:

👉 Useful Links

Omer is an F5 doctor currently working in ED. While following the traditional pathways of medical school and foundation training, he always felt that something was missing, as he wasn’t finding his chosen career as fulfilling as he had hoped.

When he started his F3 Year, he began to explore what it was that was missing by trying new experiences, testing ideas, and reaching out for mentorship and guidance. As a self-identifying ‘big-picture’ person, he thought that ward-based clinical medicine might have been the wrong route for him.

After 3 years out of training, Omer has finally found balance and a growing sense of fulfillment, as he continues to experience all that his medical career has to offer. By thinking outside the box and following his own path, he has curated a unique role that serves his higher purpose in an entirely unexpected and beautiful way.

👉 Topics Discussed

In this episode, Omer explains how to follow your internal compass and forge your own unique path for a career that will fulfill and sustain you in the long term.

This episode also includes:

👉 Useful Links

Razaz is an F4 International Medical Graduate (IMG) currently working in ICU. She studied medicine in Sudan and Saudi Arabia before deciding to return to the UK, where she’d grown up, to continue her medical career.

After 9 months of applying for NHS roles, she managed to snag a Trauma fellowship in Cambridge that seemed to offer everything she wanted. However, she quickly discovered that the job wasn’t what she had imagined it would be. She has since moved on to an ICU fellowship that she loves which has given her the multitude of skills and opportunities she was originally looking for.

In this episode, Razaz compares good and bad fellowships and gives tips on how to spot the right opportunities before investing time in jobs that don’t support your professional ambitions.

This episode also includes:

👉 Useful Links

In this episode, we speak to Dr Esra Arslanboga who is currently an F3 doctor in Wales.

Esra Arslanboga came to medicine as a post-graduate student after studying psychology and neuroscience. Her foundation training years were heavily impacted by the covid-19 pandemic and she wanted a break to travel as an F3. After a bit of travelling, she realised that what she actually was craving was the opportunity to learn, explore, and experiment within medicine.

Her F3 Year has been characterised by saying ‘yes’ to every opportunity that has presented itself, but instead of overwhelming her as she works four jobs, she has only felt invigorated by the opportunities that she missed out on as a foundation trainee.

Esra has a full-time job as a trust grade doctor in Orthopedics and also works as a locum doctor in ED. She spends her weekends doing Driver’s Medical checks and her evenings working on her fledgling business as a lifestyle medicine coach. This year, she completed the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine qualification and is now completing a functional medicine course in the limited free time she has left.

In this episode of F3 Stories, Esra shares how she has found the energy for so many different jobs, and which one she enjoys the most. She also explains how she found the job doing Driver’s Medicals, and what it entails, as well as what she has learned about herself this year and how it is impacting her career ambitions.

👉 Topics Discussed

This episode also includes:

👉 Useful Links

In this episode, we speak to Dr Amanda Pallister who is currently an F3 doctor in London.

Amanda has faced a series of disappointments throughout her F3 Year but by being flexible and keeping a positive attitude she has ended up better off each time. From losing out at the last stage of a competitive public health fellowship at an elite university to being made unexpectedly redundant from her job in the med-tech industry, Amanda has remained upbeat. She has used her newfound freedom to dive into her lifelong passion for performing and has started doing stand-up comedy.

In this episode, Amanda shares how she struggled with unexpected challenges, the importance of being flexible when plans go wrong, and how to search for new opportunities outside of conventional medical roles.

This episode also includes:

👉  The series of disappointments and unexpected twists that affected Amanda’s F3 Year.
👉  How Amanda found and applied for her fellowship, med-tech start-up, and functional assessor roles.
👉  How Amanda found new and better opportunities that suited her lifestyle.
👉  How Amanda found balance in her working and personal lives.

Useful Links

👉  Sign up to Messly’s locum finder service to get quick access to locum work.
👉  Find more alternative medical roles at Medic Footprints.
👉  Look for clinical fellowships or more unusual medical roles here and here.
👉  Follow Amanda’s comedy career on social media.
👉  Not sure whether to go with a fellowship or a locum role? Read this article to help you chose.
👉  Or, weigh the pros and cons of many options in this article.

Alex and I studied together in London. From the moment I met her, she was irresistibly likable. She was always a source of calm confidence and seemed to effortlessly balance her busy work and social lives. When the pandemic struck, Alex was working in ED as an F2 and when she started F3, she chose to take the unusual position of ED night registrar.

This contracted role required Alex to act up as an ED SpR for a whole year of night shifts which is something that might give the rest of us nightmares. But unflappable Alex not only accepted this role but did additional day shifts as a locum on top of everything else.

In this episode, Alex shares how she handled a year of night shifts and the effect that constant switching between day and night had on her life. She is also going to talk about how she found acting up as an SpR and the difficulties this entailed.

🛠️  Useful links

👉  Find out about acting up as a SpR here.
👉  Learn about A+E locum rates here.
👉  Find out how Alex was able to get a mortgage as a clinical fellow here and locum doctor here.
👉  Get tips on negotiating your own fellowship role here and find out what to do on your first day in a new department here. 
👉  Not sure whether to go with a fellowship or a locum role? Read this article to help you chose. 
👉  Or, weigh the pros and cons of many options in this article.

Luiza Guimarães is a UK-trained junior doctor who is now working as an ITU trainee in Australia.

She started her medical career with absolute certainty that she was going to become a CAMHS consultant and she devoted herself to the specialty throughout medical school. She even wrangled a foundation training job that had the rare combination of two psychiatric posts.

However, halfway through her foundation training, she had an unexpected change of heart after discovering a new love for acute medicine. She once jokingly told me that her two psychiatry rotations had made her unemployable for any other specialty but with her passion and brilliance she secured an F3 role as a teaching fellow while she worked towards a partially funded post-graduate certification in medical education.

Luiza subsequently moved out to Australia where she took an ITU job and loved it so much that she decided not to return to the multitude of training and fellowship jobs she had waiting for her in the UK. She is now on a 7-year ITU training contract in Australia.

In this episode, Luiza shares how she weighed the pros and cons of a training post in Australia over one in the UK, and how she overcame the challenges involved in building a life for herself somewhere entirely new.

Shona Johnston is a post-CCT Paediatrician who has taken a winding and unpredictable route to consultancy. Over the course of her career, she has held a number of non-training roles including overseas work with NGOs,  clinical fellowships, and teaching roles, as well as working for herself and becoming a personal coach for healthcare professionals. Shona is an expert in taking time out of training and also in helping doctors transition back into the NHS after extended periods of time off work or out of training. She has spoken at conferences on the topic of supporting doctors’ return to training, and has helped shaped the Health Education England guidance on the topic.

Shona’s medical career started rather conventionally in the UK, but part-way through a Paediatric training post in Oxford, she decided to leave her training post, and the NHS to fulfill her lifelong ambition to work in Africa. She spent 12 months in Sierra Leone working at the only children’s hospital in the country.

In this episode, Shona shares her experiences in Sierra Leone and the highs and lows of working overseas for an NGO.

👉  Learn more about the organisation Shona worked through here: https://www.vsointernational.org/