Anaesthetic Trivia - Macintosh
Robert Reynolds Macintosh (1897-1989), New Zealand-born anaesthetist, became the first British Professor of Anaesthetics in Oxford in 1937 and was a key figure in the foundation of academic anaesthesia. A pioneer, he designed his eponymous laryngoscope, spray, endobronchial tube and vaporiser.
| Your Views on Exam Preparation |
| Written by Jochen Seidel | ||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 30 June 2009 00:23 | ||||||||||||
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Your Opinion Counts !
Dear All,
There seems to be a national (and North Trent is not spared!) decline in the success rates at anaesthetic exams over the past 3 years, in particular the Primary. While there are probably any number of reasons for this (MMC disaster, changes away from basic sciences in medical school curriculum etc.) we cannot ignore this trend and keep having debates about possible remedies.
One of the concerns raised (at least by trainees in DRI) is that there is possibly not enough dedicated teaching for exam candidates, especially in the aforementioned areas of basic sciences, physics etc. The North Trent concept of hospital-based teaching has been one of teaching all-in-one, i.e. the supernumerary sits in the same session as the CCT holder in her grace period, except of course for the dedicated exam courses. Other regions (Mersey) have a different style and siphon all ST1-2 anaesthetists without Primary off every week for relentless drilling. It obviously requires a lot more resources to run different sessions.
This might be an option in order to get you lot through the exam !
We (in DRI) would consider changing our all-in-one format into a split format with separate sessions for Primary candidates vs. more senior trainees, if there is a feeling by the majority of trainees in favour for this.
Please fill in the questionnaire anonymously and return it via the CAT website, we will look at the data and consider a “pilot” of separated teaching in DRI. If it works well and the feedback is good (from all grades of DRI trainees), we will put it to the other hospitals as a change to consider.
Cheers,
Jochen Seidel
Dep. College Tutor DRI
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Hits: 1648 Comments (4)
dtarpey
said:
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... I worked in the North West and weekly teaching there is organised on a sub-regional level in groups of 6 or 7 hospitals (ie similar to this region but more compact geographically). There were separate programmes for new starters, pre-primary and pre-final trainees (not sure what happened to post-fellowship SpRs). There was also a rolling list of topics so that in theory over 18 months the whole primary syllabus was covered. This approach seemed to work reasonably well most of the time but would, as you say, have resource implications and it was not uncommon for teaching to be cancelled at short notice. The hospitals in this region being more spread out might also be an issue in terms of travel and people getting back to DGHs for on calls. |
philb
said:
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... It's definately a good idea and would have support from most if not all trainees. However it would take up more resources and to be run effectively I think would need to be centralised ie run 1/2 a day per week rotating locations and trainee oncalls covered so they can attend (I can but dream!). Thanks Jochen for looking into this. |
OlenaM
said:
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... I have anaesthetic friends in the North West and they love their system. From what I can see it works - very early on people are starting to do their reading with the primary in mind and dont do as the majority of us seem to do which is suddenly panic later on in SHO training! I dont know official figures of pass rates but certainly they appear to have a higher first time pass rate. I mentioned this to several STH consultants whilst an SHO but nobody had any interest in taking it forward. Theoretically it should be feasible in a small 'friendly' region such as ours. PS. The northern once upon a time ran a rolling rota style curriculum aimed towards exams with the trainees themselves preparing topics. I really enjoyed it but again it just fizzled out!! I think Shaun and Sumayer have the original topic list if that helps?? |
alexamannings
said:
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... Way back when, when supernumary training in the region was 6 months in the central hospitals, you were very strongly encouraged to start your basic science reading with a view to primary in those first 6 months without on call. I was regularly given an evil topic to have prepared for the next list with mentors (MAC values and partition coefficients, compartment models etc). We would get the patient on the table, then sit and talk through it. I wonder if the other factors, such as the farming out of supernumary training, with consequent reduction to 3 months (yes, I know this is in line with everywhere else in the country but), and immediate throughput to specialty (no pissing about doing 18 months of medicine as an ST) have had a larger impact than is being estimated. The bottom line is it is bloody hard work, and it was always made very clear to me that it would be 6 months of serious study, to pass. Perhaps that message is being diluted by all the other things competing for trainees attention (an audit a year, attending mandatory training, demonstrating competency in IT etc). |
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