Oriel is the UK wide portal for recruitment to postgraduate medical, dental, pharmacy, public health, and healthcare science training programmes. Oriel enables applicants to register for training, view vacancies, apply, book interviews and assessment centres, and manage offers - all within a single central location.

Creating an account 

If accessing the Oriel system for the first time, you will need to create and set up a new account. This should not take more than five minutes or so. From the main screen first select your staff group, and then 'register' in the top right hand corner. 

It is crucially important to make sure you receive a confirmation email after registering as email will be the main method by which you are contacted through the recruitment round; emails are normally received within 15 minutes, typically much quicker, and should not be more than an hour.

If you register your account, but have not received an email to either your inbox or spam/junk mail folders within 60 minutes of registering, please contact the PSRO.

Please see the Oriel resource bank for the applicant user guidance. 

The dashboard is the area of Oriel which is personal to you and where the information relating to your progress through the recruitment round is held and acted upon.

In the dashboard area, you will see eight tabs under the main headers listed below:

  • My dashboard - overview information about your account, including your unique Oriel PIN. From here you can add details to your applicant registration.

  • Documents - You are able to upload relevant documentation to your application when prompted. 
  • Applications - applications you have started or made are listed and can be accessed here. Each application contains summary information, including the status of the application. You can click on each application to either continue completing, view more detail, or carry out certain actions such as selecting preferences or amending referee details.

  • Messages - all messages sent to you via the system during the recruitment round, be they email or SMS in format, will have a copy stored here for reference (if you have any unread messages, the tab header will read 'Messages ( )').

  • Interviews - details of any interviews will be held here. Upon receiving an invitation, you can book a place at interview via this tab. 

  • Offers  should you receive a post offer, this is where you will view details of the offer and make your response.
  • References - here you will be able to view the referees which you have nominated for your application, and which references have been submitted.
  • Preferences - Here you will rank your preferences. Please see the preferences page for more information on this. 

Filters are included at the tops of pages to allow you to locate items relating to particular applications more easily.


The first step to applying is to locate the appropriate vacancy, via the 'vacancies' area of Oriel.

Physician higher specialties usually recruit nationally via a single vacancy; there are various filters to help you find the right one. It is important to select the correct vacancy as it is not possible to transfer an application. The recruitment lead will be specified as 'Physician Specialty Recruitment Office' for national vancancies.

'Vacancy' refers to a target for applications. So for example, while there may be 100 programmes available in a round, only one 'vacancy' will be created on the application system; and all candidates will apply to that one vacancy. There are a couple of points of which to be aware:

  • Northern Ireland - most physician specialties are recruited to via a separate process and vacancy for this nation. The nations/regions included in each vacancy will be clear so check this before applying as it will not be possible to switch the application after applying.
  • Combined infection training - this specialty will be recruiting at ST3 and ST4 level so there will be two vacancies and if you are interested in both, you will need to make two applications. The infection specialties section of the website explains in more deatil how this will work.