This week I'm answering the question...
What goes on at Ashford Hospital?
Plenty, as it happens. If you are thinking about a career in Surgery and you don't spend some time at Ashford, you are really missing out.
Ashford Hospital is where we do our planned surgeries. This is where pretty much all elective Orthopaedics takes place but we are not alone: you'll find Bariatrics, Upper GI, Breast and Eyes. There's no Urology, and none of the headline Vascular stuff but we still have vascular surgeons coming across for their veins & hernias and the odd Colorectal surgeon too.
I ran around theatres on Tuesday to get a snapshot of activity: here's Theatre 4
...getting ready for our team briefing. Mr Chana was in Theatre 2:
where I noticed he'd pinched my trauma specialist Ronald (2nd from left) which is not on Rishi!! Theatre 5 had more than a touch of the Cylons about it as Dean Michael, Josh Jacob & Karthick had their exhaust helmets on in preparation for joint replacement surgery
... before Dean went for an aseptic game of peek-a-boo where's he gone...?
... there he is!
The beauty of Ashford as a working environment is that it is planned. Beds are ring fenced for elective patients, there are no bed meetings or moves, discharges are organised from pre-assessment clinic... It's all very orderly.
And there is time to teach.
It's easy for those working here to feel that all the hard work isn't seen. All of the hoopla all of the time is around St Peter's: for example, no Team Briefing from the Board ever takes place here, none of the Grand Rounds or Staff Meetings. I look on that as a good thing though: there's no drama and we don't get distracted from the fun part of the job, looking after patients.
For example, in my clinic room in the Rowley Bristow Unit at St Peter's there is a constant stream of people coming in and out with questions and problems that can't wait. At Ashford, there's none of that and I can really get on with working with the patients & teaching the St George's medical students. It's lovely.
Surgical LFG
This week saw the Spring Meeting of the Surgical Local Faculty Group. We has lots to discuss after our Deanery visit, highlighting what we're doing right and what we could do even better on. 
We heard first from Mark Hinchcliffe @MarkH_work who is heading up the "Be The Change" initiative.
This is the philosophy that small projects can and will generate improvements for patients and staff and how the Trust can support everyone in seeing their ideas through by helping through the blocks.
We heard from the Trainee reps and had HR present to listen first hand to the issues and we had some robust discussions on how to improve the trainee and trainer experience.
I am optimistic that the issues for training highlighted by the Deanery visit will be taken notice of and for example job planning for trainers will at last acknowledge the commitment of this terrific bunch of engaged consultants
This looks interesting: created and run by Core Trainees @CLF_London and headlined by Oliver Warren, Consultant Colorectal Surgeon @DrOliverWarren 
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