Message from outgoing ISTG President, Christina Buckley
Dear Trainees and Trainers,
As this training year draws to a close, I would like to reflect on the events over the past year and also welcome the incoming ISTG President, David Drinkman, who will be leading the 2020/2021 committee.
As is tradition, we held the annual Careers Day for aspiring surgeons in November 2019 for an ever increasing audience. The level of enthusiasm and engagement by our future colleagues was both impressive and encouraging.
The highlight of our year was the trainee symposium held during the 2020 RCSI Charter Day Meeting which focused on “Resilience and Surgical Training: Nature or Nurture?“. This generated great interest amongst both trainees and trainers and was extremely well attended. Highlights included the debate between Mr. Sean Martin and Ms Sarah Early, as well as sage counsel from Mr. Justin Geoghegan when he delivered this years’ Bosco O ‘Mahony lecture.
Unfortunately the Silver Scalpel event was cancelled this year due to COVID-19. However, this year’s vote still went ahead and I’m delighted to announce that Professor May Cleary, Consultant Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgeons, is the winner of this year’s award.
We also embarked on some new endeavors this year. We teamed up the RCSI’s Institute of Leadership to host additional “Train the Trainer” course for senior surgical trainees, a partnership we hope to continue with going forward. Another exciting project that we are working on with the support of ISPTC, is the development of a brand new ISTG website that we hope to launch later this year. We aim to deliver a website that will be an interactive resource for surgical trainees.
It was a great privilege to speak on behalf of trainees at the RCSI Covid Webinar Series on “Sustaining the Surgical Training Programme during the COVID-19 Pandemic”. This highlighted to importance of both trainer and trainee input into the challenges and solutions that lie ahead for surgical training following the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.
To finish, I would like to sincerely thank the 2019/2020 committee for all their hard work throughout the year. I have no doubt that we leave you in very capable hands.
Christina Buckley,
Outgoing ISTG President