BOOKS

Know YourselfThe Individuals Guide to

Career Development in Healthcare
I
f you are feeling stuck or confused about your career
path then this book is for you. It will provide you with
a way to develop yourself over time. You will reflect
on your own personality and inner strengths and learn
how to develop your career to achieve more job satisfac-
tion. You will be challenged to consider what your
weaknesses are, and to think what you can do to detect or
overcome obstacles that you are putting in the way of
recharging your career. Youll gain even more out of the
exercises and opportunities for reflection if you discuss
your progress with a friend or mentor who can listen and
challenge your thinking.
The book mainly assumes that youre already estab-
lished in a healthcare career and are wanting to progress
or rediscover inner contentment in your career and life
choices. Youre encouraged to think that its never too late
to overcome your own limiting beliefs and improve your
career prospects. But theres advice too that its never too
late to start again, and a whole array of unlikely general
career options are listed in a later chapter of the book. Er,
plumberwould that be for a dissatisfied urologist? Pet
carewould that be for doctors who have an overpater-
nal approach to patients?
The book will appeal to doctors and other health
professionals who revel in reflection. There is a good
bit of material offering practical exercises and guidance.
The book does urge you to set your own milestones and
goals, and move from words to action, but the essence of
the text is to catalyse your inner reflection and self
determination. It combines a focus on feelings and
beliefs with the more practical or business side of career
development. The book emphasises your state of mind as
much as your transferable skills; your dreams and
aspirations as much as factual plans. Youll revisit your
values and read about the relevance of your personality
in your career choices and how successful you are. You
should be able to identify your personality type from
reading the detailed descriptions of Myers Briggs person-
ality factorsand have a guess at the authors tooare
you an ISFP or INFP, Anita?
I read through the book just as I too was at a career
crossroads and preparing for an interview. It did help me
to consider why I wanted to leave my relatively cosy post
to take on a taxing position with more responsibility and
inconvenience, and why I was still hungry to take on
further challenges. It enabled me to visualise the forth-
coming interview in a positive way, and debunk my own
limiting beliefs.
So did I get the job as a result? Well, yes I didso
now I may have the book to blame in the testing times
ahead. j
Ruth Chambers professor and clinical dean
Facility of Health and Sciences, Stafford University
r.chambers@staffs.ac.uk
Anita Houghton
Radcliffe, 2005, 23.50, 192 pages
ISBN 1 85775 714 9
Rating: /5
Correction
A correction has been published for this article. The contents of the correction
have been appended to the original article in this reprint. The correction is
available online at: http://careerfocus.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/331/
7528/236-c
INTERNET
Cybermedicsa virtual reality
H
ealth care in the 21st century is a frenetic business, with doctors now
so busy that they have little time to socialise or interact with
colleagues outside their immediate vicinity. Fortunately, the internet
offers some impressive (and some not so impressive) solutions to this problem
in the form of doctors only online communities.
The oldest, and best known, is probably Doctors Net UK (www.doctors.
net.uk). However, a wave of modern, well thought out successors has arisen
to wrest the baton of innovation from this once pioneering but now badly dated
website.
Leading the field of second generation sites by a wide margin is the excellent
OnMedica Group site (www.onmedica.net). Run with advice from a team of
forward thinking general practitioners, this beautifully crafted website is pleasing
both aesthetically and technically. It features a wide range of material, including
daily healthcare news, clinical interactive pages, courses and cases, appraisal
resources, personal development plans (PDPs), a roundup of current journals,
online reference books, and a healthy discussion forum.
Dr Luke Koupparis, OnMedicas medical editor, says, We work hard on
producing content and interactive resources aimed at clinicians in the UK. A
lot of thought goes into providing content that reflects the issues that are
currently affecting both primary and secondary care.Our content changes on
a daily basis and the whole site aims to have an educational look and feel.
The sites quality reflects the teams enthusiasm, setting it apart from its
competitors and making this rising star of cybermedicine well worth a visit.
Although not quite in the same league as OnMedica, both Medix (www.medix-
uk.com) and UniVadis (www.univadis.co.uk) are also worth investigating.
Univadis offers sections for many countries including the United King-
dom. It aims to provide unbiased and relevant news as well as interactive and
interesting content to the medical profession. Although the site looks
impressive, it is difficult to navigate and lacks lustre, leaving the visitor with
a distinct sense of anticlimax. It does boast the services of Dr Phil Hammond.
Medix is essentially a guide to both medical and non-medical websites,
enabling registered doctors to find quickly the information they are looking
for. The website is funded by online surveys, in which members are
encouraged but are not obliged to participate and which sometimes offer
members remuneration for their efforts. Professor M F Smith is justifiably
proud of this easy to use website, saying: I have been told that doctors like
the speed and simplicity of the site and its lack of advertising.
Other websites worth a visit are www.juniordoctor.co.uk and Medics Direct
(www.medicsdirect.co.uk). Medics Direct is aimed at the public but does
have an interesting section for doctors (http://dr.medicdirect.co.uk/). j
Rita Pal psychiatrist and freelance medical writer
West Midlands
ritapal@poetess.fsnet.co.uk
Unfortunately, an administrative error meant that we failed to publish the
authors competing interests with this review (BMJ Career Focus 2005;
331:234). We are sorry for this omission. The competing interests that Rita
Pal declared to us were:
The author was involved in litigation in 2004 with Doctors Net UK. Settled
amicably and completed many months ago.
Star rating of websites
x Onmedica (www.onmedica.net)*****
x Medix (www.medix-uk.com)****
x Medics Direct (www.medicsdirect.co.uk)***
x Univadis (www.univadis.co.uk)**
x Doctors.net.uk (www.doctors.net.uk)*
x Junior Doctor UK (www.juniordoctor.co.uk)*
career focus reviews
234 26 NOVEMBER 2005 BMJcareers