What are ‘skills’?

The word ‘skills’ encompasses many different things.  On one hand, it describes practical abilities and the measurable aspect of doing something well (e.g. giving intravenous injections).  On the other hand, skills can be less tangible than this, and more to do with personality traits and abilities (e.g. communication skills).

Why does it help to reflect on your skills?

Most people have preferred ways of working and are better at certain aspects of their role than others.  Thinking about what your skills are can help in a number of ways:

• You can more easily identify jobs that might suit your abilities
• You can increase your awareness of your strengths
• You can describe your skills more effectively (useful for applications and interviews).

How do you identify your skills?

Clinical and Practical Skills
‘Tomorrow’s Doctor’ produced by the GMC provides a list of clinical skills that are included in the undergraduate curriculum: 
http://www.gmc-uk.org/education/undergraduate/tomorrows_doctors.asp

Graduates must be able to do the following safely and effectively:  

• Take and record a patient’s history, including their family history
• Perform a full physical examination, and a mental-state examination
• Interpret the findings from the history, the physical examination, and the mental-state examination
• Interpret the results of commonly used investigations
• Make clinical decisions based on the evidence they have gathered
• Assess a patient’s problems and form plans to investigate and manage these, involving patients in the planning process
• Work out drug dosage and record the outcome accurately
• Write safe prescriptions for different types of drugs
•  Carry out the following procedures involving veins:
  (a) venepuncture
  (b) inserting a cannula into peripheral veins
  (c) giving intravenous injections
• Give intramuscular and subcutaneous injections
• Carry out arterial blood sampling
• Perform suturing
• Demonstrate competence in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and advanced
• Life-support skills
• Carry out basic respiratory function tests
• Administer oxygen therapy
• Use a nebuliser correctly
• Insert a nasogastric tube
• Perform bladder catheterisation.

It can be useful to have a check-list such as this to identify what you have particularly enjoyed developing (and ideally, for which you have also received very positive feedback).

Suggested exercise:

1.       Using this list, identify the 10 skills you have most enjoyed using.

2.       Look at the list, and see if there are any patterns to your skills. For example, do they mainly relate to skills that require you to use your hands or to master specific techniques?  If they do, you might be interested in specialties that require good manual dexterity such as surgery, radiology, anaesthetics or lab-based specialties.  Alternatively, perhaps the 10 skills relate primarily to different aspects of communicating with patients.  If this is so, you may be more interested in patient-oriented specialties such as general practice or psychiatry.

Personal skills and qualities

It is sometimes more difficult to identify your personal skills.  One way to do this is to think back over your previous experience and identifying things you have done well.  Often, what you enjoy is what you’re good at doing!

The role of experience:
During your undergraduate training you will have had exposure to a number of different hospital-based specialties, and also increasingly General Practice.  There is a large body of evidence that shows (unsurprisingly) that experiences gained at undergraduate level are one of the most important determinants of later specialty choice.

One way to think about what your skills are is to think back over what you have enjoyed doing previously.  For example, if you have completed specific rotations or even your elective, consider the following questions:

1.       What did you enjoy?

2.       What did you find stressful?

3.       What does this tell you about your key interests and skills, or preferences in terms of working environments, types of patients etc.

As well as thinking about your medical career so far, it can also be useful to take a more personal look at your previous experience using examples from areas other of your life.  Try the exercise below.  Does this bring out different skills and qualities from your career-based experiences? 

Suggested exercise:

1.       List 10 highpoints in your life: key achievements, moments of pride in your ability, difficult situations you handled well.

2.       For each one, think of approximately 5 verbs that describe what you were doing (e.g. explaining, recording, learning, diagnosing).

3.       Consider how these experiences are similar or different.  Are there themes in the skills you have used during these highpoints?  Think of various skills ‘categories’ e.g. analysis, communication, creativity, flexibility, interpersonal, leadership, organizational, research and practical.  Do your verbs fall under certain categories more than others?

4.       How does this relate to the specialties you are interested in?