The portfolio station is the second fifteen minutes of the core surgical training interview and it is the one candidates underprepare, because they assume the portfolio speaks for itself. It does not. The assessors have it in front of them and they use the station to find out whether the evidence is real, whether you understand it, and whether you can talk about it under questioning. This guide covers the three parts of the station and how to prepare each.
How the station runs
A prepared presentation of three minutes on a title set in advance. Two minutes of questions about it. Then two portfolio questions of five minutes each, on domains the assessors choose: operative experience, teaching, audit and quality improvement, research, leadership and management, and commitment to surgery. The assessors choose, so you prepare all six.
Writing the presentation
The titles that recur: why you should be appointed to core surgical training, the most significant achievement in your portfolio and what it shows, a clinical case that confirmed your decision to pursue surgery. Whatever the title, the structure is the same: one message, three supporting points with a specific in each, and a close that points forward.
For "why you should be appointed", the message is that you are ready for the job, and the three points are the evidence: the operative experience and what it taught you, the academic or improvement work and its result, and who you are as a colleague with honesty about what you will find hard. For the achievement, the message is what it shows about you as a future surgeon, not what the achievement was. For the case, the message is the decision it confirmed and why.
Write it in full, then cut it until it reads at two minutes fifty aloud at a normal pace. Cut adjectives first, then anything the panel can read in the portfolio, then anything without a specific. First person, plain verbs: I assisted, I audited, I changed, I learned.
Delivering it
Practise until the timing is reliable without a clock. Look at the panel. If you lose your place, pause and continue. Stop at three minutes if the assessors stop you. The two minutes of questions that follow will probe whatever you included, so include only what you can defend: if you mention an audit, know its numbers; if you mention a procedure, know how many you have done and at what level.
The six portfolio domains
Operative experience: know your logbook. How many of each procedure, at what level of supervision, which you could do as first operator. The assessors will ask. Say what the experience taught you about your hands and your judgement, and what you want to learn next.
Teaching: one example in depth. What you taught, to whom, how you planned it, how you knew it worked, what feedback you received, and what you changed as a result. A teaching qualification or course adds to it; a list of sessions does not.
Audit and quality improvement: the problem, the standard, the measure, what you changed, the result and whether you closed the loop. Be clear about your own part. Know the difference between audit, QI and research and say which yours was.
Research: your role, the question, what it found, and what you learned about the process. Honesty matters; the assessors read author lists and ask what you did. If you have little, say what you have done instead and what you would like to do.
Leadership and management: an example at your level where you took charge or improved something, with the decision, the communication and the outcome. Rota work, a society role, a project led, an emergency managed before the senior arrived.
Commitment to surgery: the things you did on purpose, each with what it taught you. Tasters, courses, conferences, the MRCS part A if sat, time in theatre beyond the rota, the society membership. Then why surgery, in terms of the job rather than the glamour, and what you will find hardest.
The questions assessors ask
- Which achievement best shows you are ready for core surgical training?
- How many of those procedures were you first operator for?
- Which part of the audit was yours, and what did it change?
- How do you know your teaching worked?
- What did the research find?
- What would you do differently in that project?
Prepare a one minute answer to each domain with a specific in it, and a second layer underneath for the probe.
The portfolio itself
Candidates occasionally discover in the interview that a claim in the portfolio does not survive questioning. Check every entry before the interview and remove or soften anything you cannot defend. A smaller honest portfolio interviews better than a padded one.
Practising
Deliver the presentation to someone with a timer, then have them ask two minutes of questions about it, then pick two domains at random and ask five minutes of questions on each. Repeat until every domain survives. That is the condition on the day.