It is my pleasure as RCSI President to welcome you to the latest edition of the RCSI Trainer eZine. COVID-19 continues to dominate all aspects of our professional and personal lives. Fortunately, so far our hospital system has continued to cope with the upsurge in COVID-19 cases and most scheduled care has returned to near normal levels.
This year the training environment has been altered in a way no one ever imagined. The Annual Surgical Trainer survey is now open.
This year the 2020 survey is intended to give participants the opportunity to provide feedback to the College on the supports that have been put in place and how the College can continue to provide meaningful support to those delivering surgical training in a challenging situation.
The challenges faced by the Irish health service in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID are unprecedented.
The HSE Chief Clinical Officer has agreed, as a once off in this COVID era, to provide a number of fully funded post CSCST fellowships for the July 2021 – July 2022 training year. The HSE has committed to supporting 8 Post CSCST Fellowships aligned to the RCSI for Surgery and Emergency Medicine.
TheProfessional Competence Schemesare operated by the Training Bodies under an agreement with the Medical Council. As trainers, we encourage you to advise NCHDs working with you to make sure they enrol in a Professional Competence Scheme and are recording their credits in their portfolio.
As the Covid 19 restrictions are expected to continue into the new year, the ISPTC /RCSI has been working on strategies to ensure there will be no diminution of the high standards that the RCSI Surgical Training Programme recruitment and selection processes has developed.
The exams department have worked strenuously over the past number of months to ensure that candidates would not be negatively affected by Covid 19 and have modified the exam process to ensure that those wishing to sit either part A or B of the MRCS would be facilitated.
As part of our suite of resources, RCSI now hosting a weekly 1hour webinar series each Wednesday evening at 6pm. Which aims to update surgical teams on the latest developments and what it means for them.
RCSI are hosting a regular, 40-minute webinar series which aims to update surgical teams on the latest developments and what this means for them. These webinars are free to attend. A list of upcoming events can be found here.
There are many factors that have impacted on the realm of Surgical Training over the past number of years including, the introduction of EWTD, team working, and graduate entry medicine has meant the age profile of those entering training has changed and the gender balance has altered with women accounting for almost 50% of new trainees in 2020.
The transition from senior trainee to consultant can be a challenging step. Fellowships help bridge the gap by providing subspecialty training typically at a level higher than normally received under the Intercollegiate Surgical Curriculum Programme.
The remit of the Court of Examiner’s is to increase the profile of postgraduate surgical examining at RCSI and to make such examining activity more relevant and attractive to the College's surgical community in Ireland and overseas.