BOA Latest News

BOA Virtual Courses

With the current cancellation of face-to-face educational courses, the BOA have developed Virtual Training courses facilitated by the BOA Educational Advisor Lisa Hadfield-Law.

• Training Orthopaedic Trainers (V-TOTs)

The BOA has run V-TOTs programmes since March 2020. Much of the work can be done at a time, place and pace convenient to participants, with attendance at live virtual meetings to supplement personal learning. Learning is monitored through learning logs with written feedback from expert faculty. The V-TOTs course will last for approximately six weeks.

• BOA Virtual Training Orthopaedic Education Supervisors (V-TOES)

V-TOES will be offered through two routes, and either you can join a small cohort on a paid-for course (‘Regular V-TOES’) or in many regions we are holding a ‘regional V-TOES’ at the request of the TPD:

• Regular V-TOES courses will have lower numbers of participants compared to regional courses and will be given greater moderation by faculty, and tailored interactions between faculty and participants based on the needs of the cohort.

• Regional courses will cover high numbers of participants on each programme, with

TPDs and College tutors joining as faculty. The new curriculum will require more collaboration between departments within deaneries and the BOA Regional V-TOES courses will be supporting this. These courses are being delivered as part of a BOA-led national strategy to support implementation of the new curriculum – this commenced in December 2019 and will be delivered in those regions where requested and organised by the TPD (check with the TPD for your region if you aren’t sure).

If you are interested in either course, find out more at www.boa.ac.uk/v-toes or www.boa.ac.uk/v-tots.

2021 Medical Student Essay Prize

Applications for the 2021 Medical Student Essay Prize will open on 1st April and close on 30th April. Medical students from the UK and Republic of Ireland are invited to submit an essay of no longer than 1,000 words on the question: ‘As a medical student, what would encourage you to consider a career in T&O and what are the perceived barriers to such a career?’

Further information on the 2021 Medical Student Essay Prize can be found at www.boa.ac.uk/medical-student-essay.

Committee appointments

Following a successful round of applications, the BOA would like to congratulate all those who have been appointed onto the BOA Committees:

Orthopaedic Committee

Lucky Jeyaseelan, Mukesh Hemmady, Siva Prasad

Research Committee

Hamish Simpson (Chair), Chloe Scott, Hemant Sharma, Yuri Kulikov

Education and Careers Committee Niall Eames (Vice-chair), Usman Ahmed

New Year’s Honours

The BOA would like to congratulate Professor Chris Moran who was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours, for services to trauma surgery.

Arterial BOAST update

The BOA Trauma Committee has recently updated the BOAST ‘Diagnosis & Management of Arterial Injuries Associated With Extremity Fractures and Dislocations’. This BOAST will be the next to be published in Injury.

As this issue goes to print two new BOASTs - ‘Cervical spine clearance in the trauma patient’ and ‘Providing a Continuous Safe Elective Orthopaedic Environment’ – are nearly ready for publication, so keep an eye out for these!

All BOASTs – including Trauma, Elective and Specialty - can be found on the BOA website at: www.boa.ac.uk/boasts.

Recent publications relevant to BOA members:

• The second wave of NHS-England-backed programme ‘Evidence Based Interventions (EBI)’ has been published and can be found on the AoMRC website. This wave contains guidance on 31 interventions, including ten relevant to a range of orthopaedic and/or surgical issues, and we encourage members to review the guidance relevant to their area of practice. The BOA would like to thank all involved in the EBI process last year.

• The latest NHFD (National Hip Fracture

Database) report was published in January and is available on the NHFD website: www.nhfd.co.uk/20/hipfractureR.nsf/ docs/2020Report.

UKITE 2020

All programmes across UK and Ireland sat UKITE between 4th – 11th December 2020, as well as trainees from across South Africa on 11th – 12th December 2020. We are pleased to announce that in total 922 Trainees and SAS surgeons from the UK and Ireland sat the exam and 187 Trainees from South Africa. The training programme that achieved the highest mean score was North West (Mersey) with 67%. The average score across all participants was 54%.

We would like to thank all those involved in the production and delivery of UKITE. For more information on sitting the exam in 2021 or getting involved in the UKITE editorial process, visit www.boa.ac.uk/UKITE or email ukite@boa.ac.uk.

2021 Council and Presidential nominations

Attention Home Fellows - Council Trustee and Presidential nominations open on 15th March!

The BOA believes that Trauma and Orthopaedics should be an inclusive surgical profession that inspires, attracts and retains the best talent from a wide variety of backgrounds. One of the ways we believe we can best make that a reality is by ensuring we elect a Council that fully represents all our members and better reflects the broad and diverse population we serve.

You have the opportunity to bring your skills and expertise to help us grow and develop the BOA and Trauma and Orthopaedics as a whole. A more diverse BOA, and a broader range of voices, better serves our patients and best supports our colleagues and we welcome applications from across our membership.

For further information about Council, the trustee roles and reflections of previous Council members please see the December JTO.

Please be sure to submit your nominations for Council before the deadline of 15th April and for BOA President by 1st June. More information and how to apply is available on the BOA nominations website at https://www.mi-nomination.com/BOA.

New BOA resource: COVID-19 and fracture service patient leaflets and videos

The BOA Trauma Committee has collated a number of patient information leaflets and videos from those trusts with established trauma triage services to help colleagues involved in redesign of their own services. The BOA website has a new webpage at www.boa.ac.uk/fracture-rehab with links to the information leaflets and videos used by other trusts to support fracture clinic staff. These resources can be used as templates and adapted for local use. We are also keen to expand this resource and if you have high quality patient documents/videos for injuries not covered here please contact policy@boa.ac.uk.

COVID-19 resources for members

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have provided regular email updates for our members on the latest guidance and other important developments in caring for their patients during this time and other support for surgeons and trainees. We continue to update our website with the latest information for both members and patients, and you can find all resources at www.boa.ac.uk/COVID-19.

Wellbeing and support

Wellbeing of our members and wider colleagues is an important issue for the BOA at this difficult time. In December we held a webinar, ‘Supporting surgeons through the challenges of the COVID era’. The participants in the webinar have kindly provided either a short slideset or write-up, to provide some useful nuggets of ideas for others to use. These are all available on the Transient Journal at www.boa.ac.uk/T-JTO.

Coping with COVID webinar series

The BOA has created a new series of webinars on ‘Coping with COVID’, which focus on issues affecting trauma and orthopaedic surgeons and patients as we go through the ‘second wave’ of COVID-19. The following are the first three webinars in the series and members can view the recordings at www.boa.ac.uk/ copingwithCOVID.

• Elective operating and the second wave of COVID-19 • Supporting surgeons through the challenges of the COVID era • Medico-legal aspects of T&O care in the COVID era

Conference listing 2021:

BRITSPINE

www.ukssb.com 10-12 March 2021, Virtual

BOFAS (British Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society)

www.bofas.org.uk 11 March 2021, Virtual

BSSH (British Society for Surgery of the Hand)

www.bssh.ac.uk 14-15 April 2021, Virtual

BLRS (British Limb Reconstruction Society)

www.blrs.org.uk 15 April - 18 June 2021, Virtual

BASK (British Association for Surgery of the Knee)

www.baskonline.com 18-19 May 2021, Virtual

WOC (World Orthopaedic Concern)

www.wocuk.org 5 June 2021, Chester

BHS (British Hip Society)

www.britishhipsociety.com 9-11 June 2021, Bournemouth

OTS (Orthopaedic Trauma Society)

www.orthopaedictrauma.org.uk 10-11 June 2021, Virtual

EFORT (European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology)

www.efort.org 30 June - 2 July 2021, Hybrid-Vienna

BIOS (British Indian Orthopaedic Society)

www.britishindianorthopaedicsociety.org.uk 2-3 July 2021, Hybrid-Cardiff

BOSTAA (British Orthopaedic Sports Trauma & Arthroscopy Association)

www.bostaa.ac.uk 14 July 2021, London

BORS (British Orthopaedic Research Society)

www.borsc.org.uk 13-14 September 2021, Virtual

BOA (British Orthopaedic Association)

www.boa.ac.uk 21-24 September 2021, Aberdeen

BTS (British Trauma Society)

www.bts-org.co.uk 24-25 November 2021, Oxford

BSS (British Scoliosis Society)

www.britscoliosissoc.org.uk November 2021, Edinburgh