Dear all,

The NEWS page of the website has been updated with information about:

1. International Congress on Endosurgery in Children, Rotterdam,
Septemebr 11-12 2008

2. Safeguarding children course - child protection course in Bristol,
Nov 2008

3. Trainee rep report from BAPS in Salamanca (below).

Please see http://www.trainee.baps.org.uk/page1/page1.html for
further details.


BAPS 2008, Salamanca, Trainee Report.


This year's BAPS congress was the second time the congress included a
trainee session. This was held on the Wednesday morning and started
with a free papers session with nine trainees presenting. The
subjects were varied and the talks all well presented and judged for
the award of the Trainee Prize.

These were followed by a brief trainee meeting at which the main
topic was the current number of trainees and future consultant
employment prospects. Unfortunately the recent large expansion in
trainee numbers has led to greater uncertainty about long term job
prospects post-CCT. The trainee representatives continue to raise
these concerns at BAPS executive and SAC level.

The second half of the session was a seminar presented by Ed Holyoake
of Covidien on the use of electrosurgery. This was an excellent and
interesting session and we are grateful to Azad Najmaldin for his
help in the organisation of the session.

That evening consisted of the trainee dinner sponsored by BAPS at
which David Keene of Manchester was presented with Spitz and Coran's
Operative Paediatric Surgery as the winner of the trainee prize for
his talk on the effectiveness of Broviac line dressings. We are
grateful to Rick Turnock for his support of the session, including
chairing the judging panel and his after-dinner speech, and to the
other judges Tomas Westin of Stockholm and Paul Johnson of Oxford.

We are continuing to consider how we can continue to raise the
profile of both the trainee session and the trainee dinner as part of
the congress. This has received a significant boost in Paul Johnson
negotiating on our behalf that the Trainee Prize winner be invited to
submit a manuscript to the Congress edition of the JPS. Other
suggestions have been to make the dinner open to all trainees but
have an invitation only arrangement for consultants so they can be
recognised for their contribution to training in the preceding year.
Any other suggestions would be gratefully received.

Iain Yardley & Clare Rees.