News for NET Respiratory trainees

It’s a New Year! We hope you’re helping all your patients to commit to stop smoking and increasing the rate of referrals to your stop smoking service. If your new year’s resolution is to sort out your ePortfolio and not leave it to the last minute pre-ARCP we stand with you! In sentiment at least…

Here is a round up of NET Respiratory news: 

• April rotations are out. We hope you got your first choice and that you and your Trust will be very happy together.
• Thanks to everyone who completed our recent survey on drug reps and NET Respiratory Training.The people have spoken. Drug Reps are to continue to sponsor Respiratory Training Days. Their presence will be highlighted and they will be given specific times when trainees can expect to interact. Those who would like to opt out can do so.
• The Multiple Consultant Report form is here! The RCP has introduced yet another assessment. But this one is actually not too onerous and might be very useful for some trainees. As Dr Bhowmik has pointed out: “This new process will allow more formal inclusion of the opinions of a range of Consultants rather than the ES alone. This may actually reduce the burden of responsibility of the ESs while allowing the knowledge of other Consultants about the SpR to be incorporated without an unbearable amount of extra work. Another scenario is one where the ES report did not fully cover all the issues around an SpR’s performance and this would help to improve that situation. Admittedly, this would be rare, but nonetheless useful.The Royal Colleges are recommending this. Whether it will last the test of time remains to be seen, but it looks like we will have to do this soon.” Make sure you know the requirements and leave plenty of time to complete this pre-ARCP. Information on the RCP website.
• London Chest Hospital Training Day announced for 4th March. Book your study leave now! Following this there will be a Pan-London training Day at Homerton Hospital on 24th March in honour of World TB Day.
• RCP Safe Sedation Course recommended by Dr Bhowmik, training programme director. Book your place on this 1 day course on 09/06/14 and get that essential competency signed off. With many general principles and a specific session on safe sedation in Bronchoscopy this is highly relevant to trainees at all stages of training. Book before 22nd Jan for the early bird rate of £161.

Here’s what you may have missed on Synapse:

• The London School of Medicine and Medical Specialities Conference is happening on Friday Feb 28th and is free! The programme is diverse and covers many areas of the curriculum you may not encounter elsewhere. There are some big names discussing health economics, compassion in healthcare, getting into medical education, evidence based medicine, the CQC, the Shape of Training Review, and NHS Reform. Lots to think about! You can even present work you have done on a project related to patient safety (contact Education Fellow Thofique for more details or submit your abstract online).  We hope to see you there.
• Don’t know your VO2max from your pVO2? Why not go on the CPET/CPEx course at Addenbrooke’s Hospital 10-11th July 2014? Limited to 40 attendees to allow small group work. Email Kate Homan for further information and a booking form. Of course CPET is available at UCLH so you could just arrange to go and observe. For free.
• The Clinical Respiratory Radiology Course at St Georges is running again 20-21st March. This is a useful and reasonably priced introductory course (£150 1 day, £250 2 days), good for ST3s. Email Dr Ong for further details.

What’s happening in Medical Education in London:

• We’ll let you know once we’ve been the the UCLP meetings. if you have anything you want us to raise at the Respiratory meetings or the UCLP Medical Specialities meetings let us know.
• On the agenda for UCLP Resp meeting on Jan 20th: various updates from other committees and people, the Multiple Consultant Report,  Innovative Multi Professional Training, Specialty Deliverables, Training day presentations to be saved in pdf versions on synapse, GIM training, Simulation training, Resp training opportunities in NET. Any comments or questions please pass them onto one of us.

In other news:

• We’d like to highlight all of the great work being done by NET Respiratory trainees. If you have had an article published, raised money for a Respiratory cause, written a blog, or received an award please let us know and send us a link so that we can share your success far and wide.

Alex, LJ and Zaheer