Previously called Core Skills in Paediatric Surgery. This course is designed to give paediatric surgical trainees an introduction to the core skills and common techniques used in neonates and young infants. Application forms.
Date: 15 - 16 January 2008
Fee: £900
Held at: The Royal College of Surgeons of England
Status: Places available
Contact: paediatric@rcseng.ac.uk
or call: 020 7869 6332

Convenor
Mr Anthony Lander
Consultant Paediatric Surgeon
Diana Princess of Wales Children's Hospital, Birmingham

Level-ST 1-3

Content
• Neonatal bowel anastomosis
• PUJ obstruction
• Stamm gastrostomy and duodenal atresia
• Oesophageal atresia
• Use of loupes and headlights

Format
• Introductory lectures and discussions
• Skills training supported by simulators with jigs

Duration
2 days

Key benefits
To develop some of the techniques more commonly employed in paediatric surgery for trainees committed to a career in the speciality.

The Royal College of Surgeons of England, invites trainees to their NEW residential course General Paediatric Surgery for Paediatric Surgical Trainees. This is a new national course which fills a gap in the portfolio of courses available to surgical trainees who are aiming to be specialist paediatric surgeons. The content is based on the Intercollegiate Surgical Curriculum Programme (ISCP).  
 
Convenor
Mr Girish Jawaheer
Consultant Paediatric Surgeon, Birmingham Children's Hospital
 
Course Programme
· Evidence-based practice
· Management of chyle leaks
· Long term outcomes of selected neonatal conditions
· Empyema
· Imaging
· Intestinal failure (SBS)
· Cholelithiasis
· Pancreatitis
· Trauma
· Splenectomy
· Haematology
· Endocrine and metabolic conditions
· Pain
· Neck swellings
· Vascular malformations
· Viva practice !
 
Format
• Pre course exercises
• Problem based learning
• Workshops
• Symposia 
 
Fee 
£950 - Residential (Mon Tues Wed)    
£700 - Non residential
 
The course is organised by the Raven Department of Education of The Royal College of Surgeons of England and will be held at:
Horton Grange 
Conference Park
Lucas House
48 Edgbaston Park Road
Birmingham B15 2RA
 
For more information please contact:
T: 020 7869 6341 F: 020 7869 6329 E: paediatric@rcseng.ac.uk
Or visit their website at:
http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/education/courses/specialty/paedcourses.html

E-logbook
This is accessible via elogbook.org and is the logbook we should all be using. There are Palm and Pocket PC versions that can be downloaded. The operation list has been updated and improved and now includes the codes used by HES data to code operations. Presentations showing how to use the logbook will be uploaded to the BAPS website and will be available for all BAPS members (including trainee associate members). All users of the logbook were encouraged to pay the £20/year registration fee which covers running costs and development.

BAPS-CASS Survey
This will commence data collection on oesophageal atresia beginning May 2008.

Revalidation and Recertification
These are going to affect us greatly in our consultant careers and are separate processes. They will run on a 5year cycle and are expected to start in January 2009.
- Revalidation: It is anticipated that this will be a relatively straight forward procedure and ongoing registration with the GMC can be anticipated providing regular appraisal is in place and there have been no serious concerns raised about the doctor in question..
- Recertification: This will be a more involved process led by the College and the Specialty Associations (BAPS in our instance) that will have to be completed in order to remain on the specialist register. The details are not yet clear but are likely to entail the provision of a logbook including CPD activity and evidence of satisfactory practice eg. complication rates and outcomes as well as an examined element that will have to be at the same standard as that required to obtain the CCT. The process will be on a 5 year cycle and the intention is to pilot it in the West Midlands and the South West in the first instance.

General Paediatric Surgery (GPS) Provision
The ongoing debate about the provision of general paediatric surgery continues; it remains unclear if general surgeons will be prepared to take it on or if it will become exclusively our remit. It is worth noting that the president of RCSEng and at least one vice president are of the opinion that it should be undertaken by paediatric surgeons. Whilst we did not voice an opinion as to who should be doing this work we did point out the significant uncertainty this left us in with regard to our future job prospects and appealed for clarity as soon as possible.

Training and the Tooke report

The Tooke report was broadly welcomed, particularly the notion of uncoupling ST1 and 2. This would have some implications for the implementation of the ISCP curriculum for paediatric surgery as it stands but would give the opportunity to create rotations giving a basic grounding in the generality of surgery from which trainees could apply to a variety of specialties. In considering the ideal posts to include in this time, the importance of adult general surgical experience was emphasised.
Run-through jobs offered at ST1 and 2 in paediatric surgery will be honoured. There will however be an additional ten (10) posts at ST3 level next August. It is not clear where these posts will be in the country but will be “one-off” appointments and will not recur in later years. We again expressed our opposition to training number expansion without workforce planning demonstrating a likelihood of consultant posts for the trainees once they held a CCT. Our concerns regarding training opportunity and particularly case numbers were partly allayed by the fact that these posts will not be “new” jobs, rather they will be a re-badging of existing posts (such as FTSTAs).

In the future (possibly 2009) a national selection process for paediatric surgery may be introduced, the SAC however feel they are not yet ready for this and appointments in 2008 will be made locally.

Consortia

The existing training consortia were conceived when Calman training was introduced to enable trainees to work in more than one centre without the need to reapply mid-way through training and potentially move excessive distances. However, there are now significant problems with the way they are set up. Newcastle cannot be linked to Glasgow and Edinburgh any longer as the latter are now part of Scotland, the same applies to Belfast and Dublin as Dublin now lies outwith the remit of PMETB. It is anticipated that trainees could go to Dublin as an OOPE and PMETB have indicated that ‘established links’ between centres (such as Belfast and Dublin) would not require so much paperwork as other OOPEs.
How the consortia would work with a new system is unclear and how centres continue to be grouped is currently under discussion including the need to train in more than one centre. We would welcome your opinions on this via the email group so we can present them to the SAC next time they meet.

Endoscopy
This has become something of a problematic area. Traditionally surgeons had performed both upper and lower GI endoscopy routinely. Now the gastroenterologists perform the vast majority of elective endoscopy, leaving problems for the paediatric surgical trainee who wants training in endoscopy, despite this the surgical service is still expected to provide out-of-hours upper GI endoscopy, for example for bleeding or foreign bodies. It was felt by the council that lower GI endoscopy would be unlikely to remain within the general paediatric surgeons’ skills set (with the possible exception of surgeons carrying out significant amounts of IBD surgery) but UGI endoscopy remained a key skill. The provision of courses was identified as a particular problem area and the possibility of providing these for surgical trainees will be explored.

USB memory sticks
These are in general use but, following an incident at the Edinburgh Congress, we are asked to ensure they are encrypted in case they are mislaid.

Congress 2008
This will be Wednesday July 2nd to Saturday July 5th 2008 in Salamanca, Spain. A trainee session will be held at this congress, likely to be on the Wednesday afternoon. Abstract submission details for this will be circulated soon. This session will be combined with a mini-symposium on “Energy in Surgery” organised by Mr Najmaldin. We also hope to hold a trainee dinner as we did in Edinburgh.

Congress in 2009 will be a joint meeting with EUPSA in Graz, Austria, earlier than usual from 17th – 20th June, 2010 will be in Aberdeen in July.

BAPES
BAPES (British Association of Paediatric Endoscopic Surgeons) are currently seeking a new trainee representative. If you are interested please let us know and we will pass your details on.

BAPS Membership
All trainees with an interest in becoming paediatric surgeons are invited to join BAPS as associate members. This is relatively inexpensive (£100 a year) and easy to apply for via the BAPS website. The benefits include a reduced fee for the congress and the trainees’ dinner. In order to benefit from this reduced fee, applications will need to be received before the Spring council meeting for approval. Associate members are also welcome to attend council meetings.

Iain Yardley and Clare Rees.

The High Court upheld  the appeal of BAPIO that the advice given by the Department of Health to NHS employers regarding doctors on the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP) was not lawful. The appeal was heard by LORD JUSTICE SEDLEY, LORD JUSTICE MAURICE KAY and LORD JUSTICE RIMER.  The Lord Justices were unanimous in agreeing that the DH guidance was wrong.
BMJ

FETAL ABNORMALITIES

DILEMMAS & EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE

Friday 16th November 2007

Royal College of Surgeons, London
For further information and application form contact:
Kate Billington adminsec@baps.org.uk
British Association of Paediatric Surgeons
The Royal College of Surgeons
35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields
LONDON WC2A 3PN 0207-869-6915

Registration Fee £100
Trainee Associate members of BAPS £65
Trainee Members of BAPM £65

Dear All,
At the recent BAPS educating and training committee meeting the following points were raised that you might want to know about:

1. e logbook – this is now live and we are all recommended to use it. You can find it at http://www.elogbook.org/ . ST trainees are required to use it as their logbook. Your trainers also need to sign up to the logbook as cases are only added when the trainer approves them. One of the incentives to participate in this process for trainers is that any case that they were the trainer for will be added to their own logbook, so the data will then be easily available for M&M, Audit etc. If you have any questions about the logbook, or there are operations you can't find, please email Miss Cusick directly at Eleri.Cusick@ubht.nhs.uk . If anyone has emailed via the logbook she has dealt with these queries but can't get back to you directly because she doesn't get the address of the sender!

2. Training opportunities in South Africa: an offer has been made by the South African centres at BAPS International forum in Edinburgh for their unit (RedCross Tygerburg Durban and Johannesburg) to provide training posts for SpR's from the UK. Unfortunately, these posts are not funded but there is the possibility of applying for travelling fellowships (e.g. from Ethicon). Prospective PMETB approval would also be required.

3. Nottingham training meeting – excellent feedback, we all seemed to enjoy this meeting and there was a very strong indication that themed training days were most useful to trainees. This will be taken into account for future meetings.

4. Next training day – will be held at Chelsea on 6th March 2008.
If there are any training issues that you would like me to raise at the next meeting, please email me.

Thanks.
Clare Rees.