Specialist Registrar Article Index for
Specialist
Website Links For
Specialist
 

Information About

Specialist Registrar




After graduation from Medical School , they will have undertaken several years of work and training as a Pre-registration House Officer and Senior House Officer , and will usually have taken examinations for membership of the royal college of their speciality (eg/ medical registrars will take the MRCP examinations to qualify them to become registrars.

Competition of specialist registrar posts is regarded as tough. The applicant must first get a National Training Number which allows them to enter specialist training, and then secure a post. The number of posts available is stricly proportional to the number of consultants required in a specific speciality, and therefore in the more popular specialities it can often take many attempts to get a post, leading to what is known as the "SHO bottleneck", whereby doctors are stuck at the grade of Senior House Officer for a number of years. Changes in postgraduate medical training ("Modernising Medical Careers") are underway to improve this problem.

Specialist registrars generally stay in post for around 5 years (more or less depending on the speciality), gaining experience at first in a broad speciality (e.g. General Medicine ), later specialising in a subspeciality (e.g. Cardiology ) after which they receive the Certificate Of Completion Of Specialist Training (CCST), and are eligible for promotion to Consultant . Specialist registars are encouraged to undertake research in their field, and many choose to do this by means of a PhD or MD.