As a doctor I had practiced in obstetrics and gynaecology, anaesthetics and finally psychiatry in which I also worked as a researcher. Unfortunately as a South African national I found that I was not able to gain employment on the rotations of my choice and so decided to think of other possible directions. 

I now work as an Editoral Registrar for the British Medical Journal. This is a one year training post which allows experience of working in medical publishing. The BMJ  receives between 8,000 and 9,000 submissions a year, which all need to be read by editors (less than 40 per cent are sent out for review) and this is a major part of the job, but there are also opportunities to commission articles and write as well.

So far I have found the job to be very enjoyable.  I find my days to be more intellectually stimulating than they used to be when I was an SHO.  Although it is not essential to have journalistic experience for my job clearly anything you have done will help you stand out from other candidates. I used to run a community magazine with my husband and also run and maintain a website. Given the number of papers I read, research experience is also a big plus.

My position does have some disadvantages. The biggest is that I would be de-skilled if I ever wished to return to clinical medicine. It also has no patient contact and I sometimes find myself missing this. The position does undertake to have equivalent pay to the same level in the NHS, but in the long term remuneration versus the NHS is probably less.  At the end of the year there is no guaranteed job but many previous editorial registrars are now employed here or in one of the other BMJ Journals group of companies. Other previous post-holders now work as freelance paper readers.    

www.bmj.com

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