Surgery and the Child

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23 August 2022

RCSEd Communications Team

Consultant Paediatric Otolaryngologist and Deputy Chair of the RCSEd’s Otolaryngology Surgical Specialty Board, Mr Steven Powell, talks us through the upcoming Surgery and the Child course, which will take place on 25 November 2022 at the College.

Many surgeons operate on children as part of their role, but how many have had specialist training in generic paediatric skills to manage their care in the most effective way?

Paediatric surgical care across all specialties has become increasingly centralised to specialist centres over recent years. This can result in decreased paediatric exposure for surgical teams in non-specialist centres, and the loss of confidence in carrying out appropriate secondary level surgical care close to home. All hospitals can face paediatric surgical emergency care and may take paediatric elective surgical referrals. In specialist centres, surgical teams may have paediatric emergency commitments that they do not meet in day-to-day practice.

It is important that the surgical teams across all specialties feel confident with the issues that are unique to paediatrics to enable them to deliver high quality and safe care. Understanding these issues are also core foundations to the training of every surgeon.

This unique course offers one day of focused training in paediatric aspects of surgical care delivered by an expert faculty of paediatricians, surgeons, psychologists and anaesthetists. It is suitable for consultants, trainees and specialty doctors.

Using focused lectures on key knowledge objectives and interactive, small group case-based discussions, this course will equip surgeons who treat children with paediatric knowledge and skills to enable them to confidently and safely deal with paediatric surgical care.

Delegates after attending this course will have improved in their ability to:

Place their own paediatric surgical practice within a regional and national context
Appropriately manage shared decision-making and consent in a paediatric setting
Communicate effectively with paediatric patients
Understand how to manage the deteriorating child
Discuss the issues around children with disabilities and how best to meet their needs
Explain the responsibilities for child protection in surgical care
Discuss the differences between paediatric and adult trauma
Describe latest developments in paediatric anaesthesia and how these impact on appropriate listing of surgical patients and the surgery undertaken (age, safety, pre-assessment, pain)

The course launched in 2021 and had outstanding feedback:

The faculty were very passionate about the course. The group sessions provided a good opportunity for discussion and worked well to break up the more lecture style sessions.

Good interactive discussions making the course interesting would definitely recommend it to colleagues.

I look forward to convening the course for its second year.

For more information and to secure your spot, click here.

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