Undertake professional development activities

At the early registrar level it is expected that a prevocational doctor will have undertaken a number of professional development activities.

This task describes professional development opportunities  achievable by the end of PGY3. 

  • Uses resources to support career development (e.g. JDocs website, well-developed ePortfolio)
  • Development of medical identity
  • Undertake a complementary role(s) (community, postgraduate study, committee, mentor)

Related Competencies:

Judgement and clinical decision making

Following any error in clinical reasoning, reflect on own clinical reasoning process and learn from mistake

Professionalism

Identify specific strategies for improving performance based on feedback

Professionalism

Maintain fitness for work

Professionalism

Balance the demands of personal life and work

Scholarship and teaching

Participate in research, quality improvement and clinical audit activities where possible

  • Participate in research
  • Undertake literature searches relevant to the clinical care of patients, including use of PubMed, Medline and Cochrane reviews
  • Apply critical appraisal skills when reading medical literature
  • Compare outcomes of published research studies relating to clinical care within the unit
Scholarship and teaching

Reflect on own skills and personal attributes when investigating a range of career options

Scholarship and teaching

Reflect on and learn from own observations of clinical practice

Technical expertise

Identify infection control practices

Judgement and clinical decision making

Retrieve and use high-quality information from electronic sources for clinical decision making. Document decisions and reasons for same

Professionalism

Mitigate personal health risks of medical practice, e.g. fatigue, stress

Professionalism

Critically reflect on own performance and make an accurate assessment of this

Scholarship and teaching

Assist with a research trial being undertaken in the organisation that may lead to presentation or publication

  • Frame a clinical question
  • Analyse and present outcome of literature search to colleagues, both oral and written form
  • Apply appropriate statistical methods to answer a clinical question
Scholarship and teaching

Contribute to unit morbidity/mortality meetings

Technical expertise

Attend training sessions undertaken by other members of the multi-disciplinary team

Technical expertise

Perform generic elementary technical skills

Technical expertise

Engage with Basic and Intermediate surgical constructs

Judgement and clinical decision making

Retrieve, comprehend and apply results of systematic reviews, clinical prediction rules, decision analysis and clinical practice guidelines

Judgement and clinical decision making

Discuss imperfect management and reflect on one’s own clinical reasoning process

Professionalism

Aware of the College Code of Conduct and its implications for surgical practice

Professionalism

Respond positively to suggestions for performance improvement

Scholarship and teaching

Identify personal learning objectives using a learning plan

Scholarship and teaching

Involvement with a research trial, research based on multi-disciplinary care, or quality improvement activities being undertaken in the organisation

  • Write an abstract for submission to an appropriate health/clinical meeting
  • Write a scientific paper
  • Present a research paper at a conference
  • Interpret confidence intervals, levels of significance (p values), and study power when reviewing results of clinical trials
Technical expertise

Able to assess advanced Essential Surgical Skills constructs (competent with basic and intermediate) both for use in current position as well as for surgical education and training (SET) application – career pathway

Technical expertise

Competent with intermediate and many of the advanced Essential Surgical Skills constructs

Leadership and management

Accept a hospital committee role, as member of the medical team or as trainee representative

Scholarship and teaching

Enrol in a post-graduate course related to clinical career pathway (or more broadly, such as education)

Scholarship and teaching

Research years (pre- or post-acceptance into specialty training program)