Robbie Kerr, Obstetrics and Gynaecology ST5 ACF

Posted on: 10 September 2019 by Robbie Kerr in Category

Apply for an ACF it opens doors you never knew existed!

My younger self would have been surprised by my decision to apply for an academic clinical fellow. I had little interest in academia in medical school and I made a conscious decision not to intercalate or to apply for the academic foundation programme. I saw research as driven by self-centred egos that were not concerned with improving patient care, and a distraction from my clinical training at the time.

This changed when I met my future ACF supervisor. I was excited by the research he was conducting, and started seeing how important research was to inform policy changes and improve healthcare. I enthusiastically applied for an ACF starting at ST1- however did not shortlisted for an interview.

This failure was the best thing that happened to me. It made me sure that I wanted an ACF. Over the next two years I worked with my future ACF supervisor on small research projects and was offered a place on the ACF starting in ST3.

The ACF has given me so many opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise:

I gained an understanding of what a career as an academic is like. I learnt about ethics, sponsorship, insurance, collaboration, trial steering groups, data monitoring committees, patient- public involvement groups, NIHR, clinical research networks…  …the list goes on. Most importantly I gained an understanding of what a day-to-day job in clinical research was like.

I got to travel and meet wonderful people. The ACF allowed me to travel to Uganda to perform research, to the United States to present, to Oxford for training and London for research meetings.

I received fantastic training. The ACF gave me additional funding to pursue research training in Cochrane systematic reviews and qualitative interviewing.

It opened up opportunities that would not otherwise have been possible. I joined the national trainees committee and RCOG academic board as a junior academic representative. The protected research time allowed me to help prepare a successful application for an international randomised trial, prepare a Cochrane review, and complete an academic qualification- the RCOG’s Clinical Research APM.

There is little to lose and so much to gain by applying for an academic clinical fellow post. Personally at the end of the post I decided that the academic career pathway was not right for me, chose not to do a PhD, and instead focus on clinical work.

On reflection the ACF enhanced my career and training enormously. It gave me so many opportunities, a wonderful insight into research, and helped me chose the path that was right for me.