News
2021-2022 BOTA President – Oliver Adebayo
F
ollowing our hugely successful first ever virtual BOTA Congress last year, held six months later than planned due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was an honour to be voted in as the new BOTA President. Records were broken, with the highest attendance recorded for our Congress, and BOTA’s highest voting turnout in the AGM via our transparent online polling system. The pandemic has had a profound effect on all our lives, particularly with how we interact as a profession online. As BOTA webmaster last year, I felt at the centre of an orthopaedic digital revolution with an explosion of content, discussion and opportunity for our specialty to be at the forefront of digital health. I delivered on creating and launching our new interactive website to allow it to become a hub for all orthopaedic junior doctors for key information, courses, and some of the amazing content created by orthopods around the world. I am currently an ST6 trainee in London on the Stanmore rotation, with an MSc in Surgical Innovation. I firmly believe that BOTA, representing the future of our specialty, needs to engage and lead on innovation and sustainability within orthopaedics. Furthermore with the challenges within surgery with regards to culture and diversity, I hope that we can continue the good work started by last year’s committee. As such we have established working groups within our committee to tackle these key areas. Finally in the wake of a faltering elective restart program post COVID-19, I am committed to ensuring every trainee has the opportunities they need to gain confidence in elective operating and will be working closely with RCSEngland to do so. However we can’t do it alone. We look to the whole orthopaedic community to help in pushing through an agenda of change in all areas for a better future.
“I firmly believe that BOTA, representing the future of our specialty, needs to engage and lead on innovation and sustainability within orthopaedics.”
Ortho Update 2022 Vishal Kumar
T
he BOA Orthopaedic Update held on the 8th of January 2022 was a virtual course that has contributed an immense amount of knowledge and understanding for me. I am an ST6 trainee in the East of England Deanery and due to approach my exams next year. This course has not only consolidated my knowledge but also has given me practice and taught me a method of how to approach vivas. The course included pre-course learning material in the form of short lectures distributed to candidates. These lectures were delivered by experienced faculty members who had intricate knowledge in their areas of subspeciality. They delivered lectures expanding on avenues of how to assess conditions and how to manage conditions with good references from evidence-based practice. On the day of the course we were allocated to groups over zoom. These groups were rotated around the faculty for viva style learning. Cases were presented as they would be in the exam setting and each case lead to questioning about various fields of expertise in orthopaedics. The organising team were excellent in the smooth allocation of rooms and dividing groups of candidates at a similar level. In my personal experience as my level of training had changed since the course application, the organisers were very considerate
06 | JTO | Volume 10 | Issue 01 | March 2022 | boa.ac.uk
and allocated me to another group. The interaction with the faculty was amazing. The interaction started as a case-based discussion which lead to a viva style questioning and discussion. I felt very supported and the questions that I did not know the answers to were very well explained. I did not feel under pressure to know all the answers to the given questions but felt supported to be pushed to attempt answering the questions using my own knowledge and experience. I would highly recommend this course to my colleagues at all levels. This course is well organised and very educative in day-to-day practice and exam preparation. n
