Improving surgical training

Joint statement from Health Education England and the Royal College of Surgeons

The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS)  is working with Health Education England (HEE) to pilot a new surgical training programme for general surgery. The pilot will trial improvements in the quality of training, a better training-service balance for trainees, and look  to develop other members of the team from other professional backgrounds to work alongside trainees to improve patient care.

The pilot will implement many of the changes recommended in the RCS’s Improving Surgical Training (IST) report, which was produced in October 2015 with funding from HEE following the independent Shape of Training review. The IST report found strong evidence-based arguments that general surgical training would be improved by:

• Providing trainees with a better balance between service delivery and training
• Building cross-specialty and cross-professional competencies
• Improving the quality of training posts by enhancing the role of trainers to enable them to dedicate more time to deliver training
• Adapting different rota designs to allow surgeons to train more during daytime hours
• Developing surgical skills earlier through focused training opportunities, simulation etc. so that time is not wasted, particularly in the early years of surgical training
• Training and developing a workforce from other professions (the wider surgical team) to support trainees to help deliver better patient care and free up their time for more training.

Our vision for improving emergency surgery is supported by the recent Nuffield Trust report Emergency General Surgery: Challenges and Opportunities, commissioned by the College, that proposed a number of solutions including:

• New training models to support new ways of working
• The introduction of managed clinical networks
• The increased use of protocols and pathways
• The development of non-medical roles

Ian Eardley, RCS Vice-President and Chair of the Improving Surgical Training working group said:

The GMC’s annual trainee survey consistently finds that surgical trainees are the least satisfied of all the medical specialties with their training. We believe trainees, trainers and the wider surgical team will benefit from this new approach to general surgical training, which will result in them delivering better care for patients. Ultimately we hope this will serve as a model for training in other surgical specialties.

Professor Wendy Reid, Director of Education an Quality and Medical Director, Health Education England said:

I am pleased that Health Education England and the Royal College of Surgeons are working together to explore and pilot these innovative ideas, to help meet future patient and service needs through transformation of the surgical workforce.

Recruitment for the pilot will begin in November 2017, with the pilot training programme for general surgery provisionally commencing in August 2018. We welcome comments at this stage and then applications in due course from interested trainers, trainees and HEE local offices, visit the Royal College of Surgeons website for more information.