Monday, February 05, 2007

MMC-Hammered

Around the country, thousands of doctors have spent last weekend submitting online job application forms to MTAS (think UCAS but totally experimental and juggling peoples' entire lives & careers rather than just uni degrees).

In the end, the deadline had to be shifted from from yesterday to this morning because the website kept crashing - they weren't prepared for the number of people using the site.

How very reassuring that they are not going to completely fuck everything up for all of us.

Because it was my birthday on Saturday (thank you for your unimaginative kind messages, will tell you about it later), I'd got pretty much everything ready in advance so that I could just click the [send] button on Friday night and not worry about it all weekend.

So of course, I spent most of Saturday sifting through piles of paper, sipping champagne*, hammering out last-minute rewrites to the form...


















(Thank goodness for spellcheckers - it's so easy to misspell words like "aneathetist", "incompetant", "catastrophic" etc...)

This may (not) come as a surprise, but I don't find writing particularly easy, especially given the nature of the MTAS questions.

I'm uncomfortable enough about having to encapsulate the breadth of my clinical experience, incorporating every possible buzzword, to sell myself as the best, most qualified, compassionate, competent, reflective, trustworthy, conscientious doctor in the world.

In less than 150 words.

Whilst simultaneously not sounding like an utter prick.
("I am able leap tall buildings in a single bound"-type stuff.)

But then when they ask questions along the lines of "Give a specific example of a time when you found it challenging to maintain vigilance in an environment with infrequent demands?..." - what can you say? You can't just admit to falling asleep in theatre (or in an ambulance, ITU, talking to boring patients after you've had a heavy night out, etc...). I doubt there are marks allocated to reward that level of sheer honesty. But then again, you have to admit to something...

It's an absolute bloody minefield. Thank goodness it's all over...

Interviews in a few weeks (if I'm short-listed for any).

Then most of us suffer the whole process all over again in Round2.

And after that comes Clearing. Arrrgh!



*shut up, it was a birthday present

7 Comments:

At February 05, 2007 7:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

well done... i love the title =]

 
At February 05, 2007 10:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Love the pictures, Suman. They look familiar somehow...

 
At February 06, 2007 8:26 AM, Blogger Michael said...

Nice post. I am praying that they will have it sorted out if/when I reach that stage.

 
At February 06, 2007 2:54 PM, Blogger The Angry Medic said...

Bet you're proud of the title you came up with for this post too eh?

Loved the pics too. They're almost as good as mine! :P heh. Like Katie said, they look familiar somehow...

Great post as usual. Also, congrats on the BritMeds mention!

 
At February 06, 2007 7:10 PM, Blogger Suman said...

er... thanks? The pics have been floating around the web for a while, although Katie emailed me them a few days ago - did they come from you?

Sorry/Thanks... big place the internet, haven't finished reading it all
(so don't spoil the ending for me)
-S-

 
At February 06, 2007 11:18 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm probably not the only one to have done this but I thought I'd let you know that I wish you the best of luck. Don't panic, it'll all be good in the end.

(Don't work for anywhere that's being supplied by Phoenix, I might have got me dirty hands on them beforehand. ;-). )

 
At February 11, 2007 8:40 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

have amateur transplants done a song on mmc yet?

 

Post a Comment

<< Home