I heard back this week from the organisers of the next SpR Traing Day and I
write with
details. The training day is to be held on 26/27 February 2007 in the Institute
of Child
Health in at GOS. The topic will be Urology. The URL is
http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/
education/short_courses/courses/2S_44

It has become apparent that the organisers of this Training Day have made it
part of a
pre-existing course. The cost is more than usual; initially £220 rather than the
usual £100
or so. Furthermore, I gather that the course has been said to be compulsory for
those in
the London/Southampton/Oxford consortium as it is being held in conjunction with
the
RITAs.

There has been a great deal of discussion about this during the week. For your
information, Mr Mushtaq has reduced the cost to £180. It would not surprise me
if this is
still felt by trainees to be too high and may impact on numbers attending.

On the issue of compulsary attendance, Mr Mushtaq says that the meeting is a
Consortium
Training Day for the London/Southampton/Oxford consortium and it is as such it
has
been made compulsory for that group. I explained that £180 is a lot to pay for a
compulsory course, particularly for those not intending to do Urology as a
career. It would
be a shame to make a consortium training day a source of ill-will. Obviously the
RITAs are
compulsory.

Richard Lindley and I have both been in touch with BAPS who oversee the Training
Days to
seek clarification about the course, its cost and the need for it to be
compulsory. We will
write again when we hear back,

Jonathan Sutcliffe