ENT Specialty - Find your place

I always thought I wanted to do paediatrics, but actually when I did ENT, the amount of hands-on stuff you get to do, the supportive nature of ENT surgeons in general, it just kind of nurtured me into going towards it, and I think seeing some of the cool surgery at a very early stage in my career meant that I knew straight away that's what I ended up wanting to do. I'm Ammar, I'm one of the ENT registrars in the North, we're currently at the Freeman Hospital just outside the ENT operating theatres, and I can't go in obviously because it's quite busy at the moment, but hopefully we'll get you in there soon and we can show you what we get up to. Yeah, this is where we spend a lot of our time operating. Right now, having been doing the PhD, I am able to work from the university, come into hospital and do some research stuff as well, as well as keeping my hands dipped into clinical work, so it's quite a nice variety at the moment. So I actually studied in Birmingham and did my foundation training, my academic foundation training in Birmingham, and one of the reasons that drew me up here was the academic programme here. So they're a very, very strong research unit in Newcastle, and particularly the head and neck cancer unit is really, really strong. They do a lot of positive research that makes a real impact on patients' lives, and actually the North East was recommended by a colleague down in Birmingham who said the unit there is amazing. And actually, coming up here, the training is just beyond describable because they give you so much appropriate independence, and they're just so nurturing in trying to get you as good in the clinical land as you can. Knowing the training programme director, you get to meet them quite early, and if you tell them that you're interested in a subspecialty within ENT, they will guide the training towards that. So for example, my long-term plan is to be a head and neck cancer surgeon with a research interest. They have really been able to give me the jobs to try and make sure that I get the balanced training to start with, but also very focused on head and neck. So I think the fact that they guide you towards and support you on whatever specialty you want to do, whilst making sure you're well-rounded, is what is really good. Actually, everything you have within the major cities, you have within the North East anyway, but you just add in countryside, so if that's something you like as well, you can do the hustle and bustle of a city, but you can also do that countryside thing. It's quite nice. And even going all the way towards Carlisle, which is where sometimes we're placed, actually it's such a nice area to go for hikes, and I was there for six months and actually really enjoyed it because you could go cycling, you could go towards Lake District, which isn't far, it's only about half an hour, 20 minutes, half an hour from there. So overall, it was just one of the selling points of Newcastle, I think. It's huge on your work-life balance because working in hospital is stressful, and you've always got something going on in your head about what you need to do next, what's next, because it's never-ending. Any hospital you work in, irrespective of what specialty you do, but having that ability to take time away, relax, go to the beach when it's nice, surf, it just means that you're just less stressed, you've got things that you can look forward to, you've got things you can enjoy. So yeah, it makes your work-life balance far, far better than where it would be otherwise.