In addition to the OOPE issue, these topics were also discussed at the Surgical
Accreditation Committee meeting

RITA

The name is going to change and there will be only one chance to get a fail; the
trainee
will leave the training scheme on the second fail.

External Assessor

Each RITA panel should comprise an external SAC assessor. There was a discussion
about
how anonymous comments from trainees could be passed to the SAC Assessor before
the
RITA.

If you have suggestions regarding the desirability of this, or the mechanism,
please let me
know.

Workforce Planning

There has been no expansion in numbers in most specialties because of concern re
post
CCT unemployment. Mr Ribero (PRCS Eng) says that the consultant job in the
future is
going to be different and therefore encourages expansion.

Unfortunately, the survey we have recently undertaken indicates that Paediatric
Surgery
trainees may be affected by unemployment post-CCT. Numbers are not available as
we do
not yet have information from the London trainees, nor do we know how many
Article 14
people will go through. If you are a London trainee and the information from
your training
centre has not yet gone back to Niall Jones, please could you return it.

Consultant Job Eligibility

There are 3 potential routes for eligibility for consultant post application:
1. CCT
2. CEST
3. Article 14
Locum Consultancy cannot be used as a way to go through as Article 14 unless
clear
appraisal using Consultant Appraisal forms as potentially narrowed experience

MTAS

16 posts are currently being interviewed for ST3, 26 for ST2 and ST1 17
NTN in Urology was intended to act as a way to expand numbers and increase the
numbers of trained Urologists. On that basis, the NTN Urology Trainee should be
asked to
give up NTN to allow someone else to start.

PBAs

Procedure based assessment (PBAs) will be used for ST1 – 3 from August this year
and are
available on the ISCP website.