5th October 2015

Trainee Talk

This week I got to catch up with Aphiwat Luangsomboon, our CT2 currently working in Breast Surgery (see here on the left, with Seok Cho, our T&O CT2):

Aphiwat was at Eastbourne for his first year and joins us still looking out for the speciality that will suit him best. Like many trainees, Aphiwat has struggled with the concept of ISCP but we had a good session getting to grips with it and I hope he can now embrace the Portfolio as a means of showing off his hard work. Good luck to Aphiwat, and to Sophie @sophiehfwrigley, both sitting MRCS B on October 14th.

The Trauma List was a good chance to catch up with Seok @YSeokC who was stepping up this week as we approach HST (registrar) changeover. Here are his thoughts:

"Core surgical training @ASPHFT has overall been a very positive experience for me. I think the most notable aspect is how supportive seniors and staff have been. I’ve worked with very helpful registrars and I think this is has been very important having entered the first stage of surgical training, allowing a smooth transition from F2 to CT1.

"I think the biggest difficulty in CST was trying to balance theatre and clinic time with ‘service provision’ – i.e. helping out with ward jobs. Although JCST guidelines do state you need all the theatre and clinic exposure as much as possible in order to get through the ARCP and meet the educational requirements, this is not always understood by your fellow junior doctors who are on the wards doing ‘admin’ jobs. This was particularly noted during one busy surgical speciality, where there were 2 locum doctors and me covering the whole service, and six consultants. Additionally, we were required to prepare for the weekly MDT and Friday meetings (looking at past and upcoming theatre lists and rota) which took up quite a lot of time.

"Fortunately, T&O team in ASPH has an abundance of junior doctors so I’ve had the luxury of being in theatre and regular fracture clinics. Consequently the learning experience has been superb, and in fact I have applied to stay in ASPH for the CT2 year for another year of T&O. There has also been great mentors within the department."

Surgeon of the Week

Another new(ish) face for you this week: Mr Ioannis Polyzois, Upper Limb T&O surgeon. Ioannis joined us at the beginning of the year but really it is a homecoming as he was previously our Upper Limb Fellow before training further at the Reading Shoulder Unit. 

I'd like to point out that the extremely good-postured Sr Leynie Lugtu is actually standing on tiptoe as she felt very tiny next to our Greek Colossus

Forthcoming Attractions

If MRCS is looming on your horizon, here's an OSCE course at RCS @rcsnews:

If you are looking for guidance on writing up your projects, here's one on how to write a surgical paper:

If those milestones are behind you, here are some core-level courses on how to use that camera: