Contact


Twitter 

https://twitter.com/The_surgi_reg



E-mail

thesurgicalreg@gmail.com



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Pick a Subspecialty

The question of how to choose a subspecialty is an anxiety that has insidiously been creeping into the periphery of my consciousness over the past few months. I am now midway through my ST5 training year, and thoroughly comfortable with my identity as a surgical registrar. Unfortunately, my levels of self-regard have clearly not yet reached sufficiently lofty levels, and I am still utterly unable to imagine myself as a consultant. I am therefore at rather a loss as to how to answer my TPD’s recent enquiries as to my thoughts regarding a subspecialty, and have ignominiously left that particular e-mail unanswered for an unacceptably long time. But this is a big decision! Training feels preposterously long and arduous; but is actually only a trivial 8 years compared to potentially 30 to 40 years of sub-specialist consultant practice! Nonetheless, before the end of training, a declaration must be made as to which of the five sub-specialties is preferred; the major sub-specialties being Bre...
Read more

Why does it take so long to train a surgeon?

Image
Why does it take so long to train a surgeon? The typical trainee will not finish training until the age of 35-40 years old. I am currently 34, and still have years of moving around the region, jumping through hoops and fighting to get operating time and sign-offs to look forward to. Surgical training is not a comfortable place, and I have not met a single trainee who is content with year after year of no fixed routine, no certainty, constantly moving around, no time for friends and family, difficulties setting up a home, financial worries and concerns about the future. Furthermore, new consultants are now very much  not  expected to be the finished product, and it is anticipated that they will still be learning how to operate and function as a senior surgeon for some time after completion of training! Elsewhere in the world however, surgical training is often much quicker than our minimum of 8 years of surgical training. The Americans for example, despite all of their advanced...
Read more

Broken NHS

The papers are screaming vociferously about the current crisis in the NHS. People are dying in the back of ambulances whilst stuck in a queue to get inside the hospital, and still more patients are dying on trolleys or chairs in corridors once they get in through the front doors. As a Guardian-reading lefty, I have subsequently been subject to a smorgasbord of sensationalist statistics over the last couple of months. For example, in September 5,025 patients waited for more than 12 hours to be admitted to hospital in England[1]. The figure for October was 7,059 people – the highest number on record apparently[4]! The target that 95% of patients attending A&E should be seen within four hours has also apparently gone out of the window, as they are currently only hitting an unseemly 62%[3]. Furthermore, an estimated 6,097 people in the UK died in 2020-2021 due to the roadblock of A&E delaying their care[4]. The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives also recently weighed in to g...
Read more