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01 Aug 2018
The first cohort of surgical trainees to take part in the Improving Surgical Training (IST) pilot will take up their posts today (1 August 2018). The pilot training programme, developed by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) and Health Education England (HEE), will trial innovative improvements in the quality of training, a better balance between service and training for trainees, and professionalisation of the role of surgical trainers.
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30 Jul 2018
Dame Clare Marx, Past President of the Royal College of Surgeons, has been named as the new Chair of the General Medical Council (GMC). She will succeed Professor Sir Terence Stephenson who will finish his fixed-term post later this year.
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19 Jul 2018
The BMJ has found an increasing number of patients seeking knee or hip surgery are finding they can’t have their operation on the NHS. Nearly 1,700 requests were rejected last year, a 45% increase from 2016-17.
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17 Jul 2018
Thousands of predominately-male patients are being made to suffer in pain and, in rare cases, are at risk of death due to the NHS restricting access to groin (inguinal) hernia operations. In a report published today , the Royal College of Surgeons and the British Hernia Society have found that 57% of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are denying patients quick access to the procedure. This is despite the fact that the only curative treatment for patients with a groin hernia is surgery.
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12 Jul 2018
The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) has revealed that NHS hospital trusts own over 8,000 fax machines. Richard Kerr, chair of the Royal College of Surgeons’ Commission on the Future of Surgery, has criticised the health service’s reliance on a technology that was in popular use about the last time England were in a World Cup semi-final.
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12 Jul 2018
Critical care services in Wales are to receive a new annual £15 million fund, the Health Secretary, Vaughan Gething, has announced today (12 July). The Royal College of Surgeons welcomes the announcement and hope the Welsh Government will now move at pace, so that patients quickly feel the benefit of the extra funding.
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12 Jul 2018
The number of patients waiting longer than 6 months to start planned NHS hospital treatment has now officially exceeded 200,000. NHS England ‘referral to treatment’ (RTT) statistics for May 2018 published today show that 211,324 patients waited more than 6 months to start planned treatment. The number of patients waiting more than 6 months for treatment is 48.4% higher than the same time last year.
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11 Jul 2018
The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme has today (11 July) published its report on urology in England. The Royal College of Surgeons is supportive of the recommendations put forward by GIFRT.
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25 Jun 2018
“We warmly welcome the measures that have been announced by the Government today. Excessive sugar consumption is a major cause of both obesity and tooth decay, so these new policies will make a significant contribution to addressing the poor state of children’s oral health in this country, where nearly a quarter of five year olds have decayed teeth."
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19 Jun 2018
Older women with breast cancer must be offered treatments that will give them the best possible outcome, a leading surgeon has said today, as new data suggests women over 70 are less likely to undergo surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy than women aged 50 to 69.