Everything you need to know about being a research fellow in one video. Hi, my name is Wanie. I am a junior doctor currently doing an F Y 4 UM as a research fellow in infectious diseases, and I also did a F Y 3 as a research fellow as well. I get asked a lot of questions about my job, so I decided to answer all the main ones I get in one video. Special thanks to Intermedic Diaries who sent me a bunch of questions which I answered and asked if I could use them as a basis of this video. Bear with me, cause it might be quite a long video, but I’m going to put time stamps in the caption so you can save the video, come back later, and pick up at whichever question you want answered. So without further ado, question No. 1. What do you actually do as a research fellow? Well, what you do as a research fellow is very much dependent on whatever research is happening in the department you are working for. Like I said, I work in an infectious disease unit. Last year I was working as a sub investigator on clinical trials, and these are mainly vaccine studies. I would work under a bunch of consultants who were the chief investigators of the studies. And because they also have clinical duties or other academic duties, they subdelegate a lot of that role to us as research fellows and Sub investigators. So we would do the day to day running of the trial. Of course, if we ever needed any help or support, they were always on hand to answer any questions we might have. But my day to day tasks involved recruiting people, consenting them onto the studies and making sure they were informed about what they were signing up for, making sure they were safe throughout the duration of the trial, dealing with any side effects or adverse events that might happen, prescribing the medications that were on the trial and liaising with the nursing team, monitors, sponsors. A lot of this job was people skills and making sure everything ran smoothly by talking to the right people. Like I said, this year I’m also working as a research fellow, but this time I am a co investigator on one study. So in this role, I’m basically helping design the study from scratch, writing the protocol, getting ethics, and then when we get the ethics, I’ll be running the trial in a similar way to what I was doing last year, but I’ll also be involved in analysing the results and writing up the study. This is just one example of what you could be doing as a research fellow. Question No. 2. What is your salary? Slash pay. So generally as a research fellow, your salary is matched to whatever nodal point you are on the pay scale. So you would get paid the same or The next band up to whatever training grade you were doing in the year before. In the NHS you can’t really be paid less than your previous role. The whole idea is as a trainee you need to progress, even if you take some time out to do something different, like a research fellow. So for me as an F Y3, I got paid at the same band as a CT one or ST one on the pay scale. However, I work alongside someone who has completed IMT three, so they’re getting paid the same as I m T3 level on the pay scale. I have seen research fellow jobs where they kind of meet you halfway between your previous role and the next role you’d be going into. So if you finished F Y2, they pay you halfway between an F Y2 and an N C T1. Question No. 3 do you do any clinical work? For me, my role is purely as a research fellow, so I have no clinical commitment. I’m only ever on the wards if I’m recruiting a patient or if it’s something to do with an extracurricular activities I’ve signed up to do myself, like teaching medical students. That is my contract as a research fellow. But I have seen other research fellow contracts where your time will be split some part clinical, some part research. For example, 20% clinical, where you’d be on the normal rota 20% of the time in whatever department or Ward you’re working in and then 80% of the time would be, I’m dedicated to research because my role was completely non clinical. I did pick up quite a few locum chefs last year. Out of hours, um, just to keep up with my clinical skills. That leaves me quite nicely to question No. 4. What are my working hours? So my role as research fellow is 9 to 5, no out of hours, no nights, no weekends, um, no bank holidays, anything like that. And I think that tends to be the norm. And that suited me just fine cause I hate working nights. Occasionally we were asked if we would be happy to cover some studies out of hours at the weekends. I only ever had to do this on 2 weekends in the whole of last year. And I don’t think I’ll have to do this at all for this study that I’m working on this year. Question No. 5. I get this question a lot. Did I have any research experience prior to starting this job? The answer for me is no, I did not. I only did the mandatory research projects that we had to do in medical school and like the audits that we had to do in foundation training. That is because the specific role I went for, um, was designed to allow people to gain research experience. Having research experience did not actually. And work to your advantage in interviews and in Applications, but this isn’t always the case, and some research fellow roles are kind of aimed at people who are more senior in their career and then you’d be expected to have some kind of research experience. What I tend to see that the departments are looking for is people who are passionate and interested about whatever area it is that they’re going into. So if it’s a dermatology research fellow post, then as long as you have a passion for a career in dermatology and and you’re interested in research, then that tends to be the minimum criteria. And you can also show interest in research by doing online courses. A lot of the ones on the N I H R A. Website are free and you can get a certificate to show your interest in research. No. 6 do these roles support people on a visa? The answer is yes. These are standard contracts within the NHS or within a university setting and they will support people on a visa. No. 7 would I recommend this role 100%? Um, I think this role has a allowed me to realise what area of medicine I want to go into, it’s allowed me to have a working life balance. And it’s really helpful for getting points on your applications. Whatever specialty you want to go into in the future. And finally, No. 8 how did I find out about my job? How do you go about getting a research fellow? For me, I found out about this job because I did an F Y 2 rotation in microbiology and virology. At this time, I had no clue what I wanted to do. And I was really close with my educational supervisor and I told her I’d like a year to build some points on my portfolio, but also experience something different. And she knew the consultant kind of heading up this role, so I spent some time talking to her about what kind of research was going on in the department, and the more I heard about it, more I like the sound of it. So I applied, interviewed and got the job. The jobs tend to be advertised on the NHS jobs website or through university websites, so don’t forget to check those as well. They tend to start around August time, so. Or December time. So the best times to be looking for the jobs would be around may time for the August start, or October time for the December January start. And my number one piece of advice if you’re applying for a research fellow post is that they tend to like to know who they’re employing. And you can show your interest and excitement for the role by meeting up with whoever’s, um, heading up the role and discussing the research and, yeah, just showing that you’re passionate about it. I hope this video has helped. If there are any questions that I haven’t answered, please Put them in the comments and I will do my best to answer them.