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If you want your portfolio to help you to look professional, experienced, competent, and to make you stand out as the best choice candidate in a job or training interview, then you need to make sure that your portfolio is filled with high-quality evidence that supports this.

You can’t expect to gain passive qualifications simply due to the passage of time. The way you build a killer portfolio is through action. 

This article will explain the main areas of a portfolio where you can gather high-quality evidence, and how to use this to get the job of your dreams, ace an appraisal, or ensure that you are experiencing everything that your career has to offer.

By focusing your attention on these specific areas, we are confident that you will maximise your chances to achieve your goals. 

You can go directly to our Portfolio Companion for answers to all of your portfolio-related questions if you prefer.

💪  Personal Development Plans

A personal development plan (PDP) is an exercise that all training doctors will do at the start of placements, and all non-training doctors will do at their appraisal meetings. 

The PDP is an exercise in self-analysis and self-reflection to help you identify areas where you’d benefit from improvement, attention, or where you are not meeting the GMC Good Medical Practice guidance. It forces you to take a moment and consider the opportunities in front of you and set goals for what you would like to achieve over the coming months or years. 

If you are a locum doctor or do not have an educational or clinical supervisor, then it is unlikely anyone will hold you accountable if you don’t set yourself a PDP. This is particularly true for new F3 doctors who won’t have an appraisal until the end of their F3 year or later (Read our article 'The secret reason that PDP's are great for F3 and Locum doctors'). However, we would argue that making a habit of setting your own goals and sticking to them is an excellent way of ensuring that you don’t panic last minute when it comes to applying for specialties or preparing for an appraisal. 

In each PDP, consider the GMC Good Medical Practice guidance and the requirements for each revalidating doctor. This includes:

👉  Getting feedback from colleagues
👉  Getting feedback from patients
👉  Participating in CPD
👉  Participating in Quality improvement activity

There are two other domains that the GMC states you must declare at appraisal or ARCP which is complaints and serious incidents but it doesn’t make sense to include these in a PDP. 

Using SMART goals, you should consider how you are progressing in each of these GMC Good Medical Pratice domains and think about how you can improve over the coming months. Set yourself a low bar as life and work tend to get in the way and it doesn’t really feel great to fail in your goals so try and be reasonable in your expectations of yourself. 

Read more about how to set PDP goals in our Portfolio Companion here. 

🏥  Workplace Based Assessments

Anyone who has completed the UK foundation training programme will be familiar with the concept of workplace based assessments (WBA’s) also known as Supervised Learning Events (SLEs). 

This includes:

👉  Mini-CEX
👉  DOPS, CEPS, and PBA
👉  CBD 
👉  Procedure logbook

These are structured exercises done under the observation of an assessor who provides feedback and a sign-off document at the end of the assessment. Training doctors will be required to complete a number of these every year, though the specific number will depend on the specialty they are in. 

As a non-training doctor, your appraiser may state that you should complete some of these in the PDP set at your appraisal, but F3 doctors who have not yet had their first appraisal will not have any obligation to complete these. 

Having said that, the skills assessed in WBAs are widely practiced on any normal shift in a hospital and if you are doing these things on a day-to-day basis anyway, it would be a great investment of time and effort to try and get some additional feedback and sign-offs from your seniors. Not only does this keep you learning and improving your practice outside of training, but it also shows potential future employers that you are engaged, enthusiastic, and serious about your career. 

Gathering WBAs is essential if you have taken time out of training but plan to apply for training in the future. Without additional WBAs gained in your non-training years, it may appear on paper that you have no more skills or knowledge than you did as an F2 doctor. 

You can read more about workplace based assessments and how to complete them, as well as worked examples and templates in our Portfolio Companion. 

🩺  Continuing Professional Development

This section of your portfolio is where you can include evidence of any learning you have received over the medical year (or appraisal year if this is different). 

You can include everything from junior doctor teaching or Grand Round, conferences to courses, simulation training to self-directed learning. 

This section is one typically ignored by F3 doctors who are mainly working as locum doctors. In substantive posts (contracted roles), training is included in your work schedule and you are paid to attend it. Usually you get a study budget which can make conferences and courses more affordable to attend, and you have a dedicated educational supervisor who can support you in finding opportunities for learning. As locums, these opportunities have to be sought out, bartered for, paid for out of pocket, and attended in our own free time which perhaps puts it low down on the priority list. 

There are lots of ways to find free CPD opportunities and many of these can be done online and fitted around your own schedule. Building up the CPD section of your portfolio can make you feel more confident in your ability, more clear in where your interests lie, and can make you stand out when applying for jobs if you have special interest activity that relates to the role you are applying for. 

💼  Summary

There are, of course, many other ways to build a great portfolio and these ideas are not at all exhaustive. We totally agree with the GMC when they push quality over quantity in a portfolio. The GMC rarely stipulates the number of reflections, WBAs, or CPD points required each year. Instead, they encourage doctors to engage with these experiences and activities in a way that is valuable, memorable, and meaningful for their career and development. 

The true secret to a killer portfolio is to have experiences that you have reflect on, discussed with your appraiser or supervisor, shared your learning with peers and juniors, and show growth from in your practice, not simply bulking it out with less meaningful ones. 

For more information about portfolios and PDPs, templates for WBAs, ideas for CPD, and much more, visit our Portfolio Companion.

The Ultimate Guide to Your Medical Portfolio

This article is part of a wider series of resources designed to support doctors through the process of building great portfolios. The heart of this is Messly’s Portfolio Companion, which is a detailed set of guides, templates and tools to help you build and manage your portfolio with confidence. For other articles and discussion on the topic, click here.