How to Get Into: Nuclear medicine

Courses & Conferences to Attend

The majority of the following courses are Online, on the Coursera and Edx platforms; these used to be free when I did them.

Any leadership course offered by your deanery or trust

Introduction to Good Clinical Practice ( NIHR)

Any research-related courses offered by your trust, even online.

Statistical Analysis of fMRI Data can be found online on Coursera

Statistical Analysis of Functional MRI Data

Introduction to Biomedical Imaging

The last 3 courses could be done online for free, and take a copy of your progress to prove you completed them ( I think now if you want a certificate, it would be with some fees)

How to Maximise Your Portfolio

Medic mentors: you could volunteer for a few days, and they provide some teaching Prizes.

Participate in the regional/ national teaching days in your region, even with a case presentation.

Try to find someone in your trust who works in research and show interest and ask for participation, if not there are plenty of courses you can do to show your research capabilities in the application as the courses I mentioned above, also try peer reviews in Cureus journal, you could earn Cureus scholar honours status after few months of peer reviewing and you could use it as a research prize.

Try to organise a local teaching forum on a weekly or monthly basis and keep the schedule as a record, with feedback.

You can also do this course to claim teaching points, Instructional Methods in Health Professions Education by the University of Michigan, which is free, and you can copy your progress.

Get QIP done and presented in national or international forums, even online.

There are some competitions that you can participate in, such as: BNMS and BSIR essay competitions, SRT poster competition, or attend any of these meetings / their conferences, or one of the BIR annual meetings

Making the Most of Your Day Job

The most important thing is to organise a couple of taster weeks in the Radiology and Nuclear Medicine departments. This will enrich your knowledge of things that you could mention in your interview. To shadow one of the registrar for a few days to see how they spend their day.

Work on maximising your MSRA score. There are plenty of resources to mention, but a few: Passmedicine, pastes, and Onexamination, etc. Please pay careful attention to SJT questions, as the majority of people struggle with this.

Try to subscribe or become a member of some societies as BNMS, EANM, BIR etc, Some of these are free/ discounted for junior doctors.

Making the Most of Nuclear Medicine Placements

Get involved in teaching, audits, and leadership roles. Write a local guide for new doctors to help them settle.

What About Non-Nuclear Medicine Placements?

To read about the specialty beforehand and ask around colleagues and seniors.

Top 3 Tips for Getting Into Nuclear Medicine

Tailoring Your Nuclear Medicine Application
Read the job description as well as the eligibility criteria of the Nuclear Medicine application, and try hard to show every part of that in your application.
Read the draft for the curriculum for Nuclear Medicine
It is only a few pages, but you will have a great understanding of the structure of training and the dual CCT pathway, as well as the decision aid. This can be found here: Nuclear Medicine | JRCPTB
Emerging Trends in Nuclear Medicine
Read about some of the new developments in NM and mention them in your interview, such as PMSA. And have a look at the NM webinar that also highlights some of the challenges that face trainees, Nuclear Medicine Career Webinar (youtube.com)

Spot something that needs updating? We do our best to keep things accurate, but medicine changes fast. Let us know and we'll sort it.