Urology and vascular surgery trainees, is our training pilot for you?

With recruitment soon to begin for our new training programme for general surgery, the RCS and Health Education England (HEE) are pleased to announce that extra specialties are set to be included.

 From August 2019, the pilot programme for the Improving Surgical Training (IST) project will expand to include urology and vascular surgery. 

The aims of the IST pilot are to trial: 

• Improvements in the quality of training
• A better training-service balance for trainees
• Professionalisation of the role of the trainer
• Development of members of the surgical team from other professional backgrounds to work alongside trainees to improve patient care.

Mr Ian Eardley, RCS Senior Vice President and sponsor of the IST Project Board, says he is delighted the development in surgical training will now be available to extra specialties. 

‘This programme benefits not just surgeons, but also the wider surgical team as well as patients,’ he says. ‘By widening the scope of the project to include urology and vascular surgery, we will now also be able to monitor the robustness of the training across specialty. Proper assessments of the programme are vital to ensuring the training is having the desired impact.’

Likewise, Professor Wendy Reid, Director of Education and Quality and Medical Director at Health Education England, is pleased the opportunity to participate in the pilot will be offered more widely. 

‘Our long term vision for this initiative is to develop improved training across the board for the benefit of patients, not just particular specialties. Opening up the pilot to other surgical specialties is a key step towards this,’ she says. 

To learn more about how the pilot will work, foundation and core trainees are invited to participate in our upcoming webinar on the evening of October 26. Register on our webinar event page. 

Key dates

October 26 2017 RCS webinar: recruitment information for the Improving Surgical Training pilot in general surgery
November 2017 Recruitment for the general surgery pilot begins
August 2018 Pilot training programme for general surgery begins
August 2019 Programme expands to include urology and vascular surgery