BOTA update- 2022 Congress Review

Alexandra Haddon, James Chowdhury and Abhinav Singh

The BOTA 2022 Congress was held in the vibrant city of Liverpool, 22th – 25th November 2022, and focussed on sustainability with the theme ‘More green. More global. More diverse’. Delivered in collaboration with MedAll, this was the largest hybrid BOTA Congress to-date totalling an amazing 511 delegates. This included 61 Fair Medical Education Online Tickets for Low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) attendees, 30 online and 420 in-person tickets. The Congress’ huge success is a testament to the efforts put in by the outgoing BOTA 2022 Committee (led by Oliver Adebayo) and the Education Subcommittee (led by Adrian Andronic).

The pre-Congress face-to-face courses included: the BOMSA Medical Student day, the ST3 Human Factors Bootcamp and the Postgraduate Orthopaedics FRCS Viva. The pre-Congress virtual courses were: Innovation in Orthopaedics and Equality, Diversity, Inclusion (EDI) Training. The Congress itself had some fantastic educational content thanks to BESS, AO, OTS, Let’s Talk Doctor and many of our industry partners. With increasing trainee interest in navigated and robotics arthroplasty, there were interactive demonstrations of the MAKO (Stryker) and ROSA (Zimmer BioMet) systems. B. Braun also delivered an informative workshop on virtual surgery. Feedback demonstrated that all sessions were both well attended and received by junior and senior delegates.

From a research perspective, a very healthy 174 free paper submissions demonstrated the industry of orthopaedic trainees over the past 12 months. Three podium presentation prizes were awarded to James Archer, Jamila Tukur Jido and Michael Pullinger. The Dragons’ Den session lived up to its name, with trainees pitching their work to Professors Siobhan Creanor, Caroline Hing, Xavier Griffin and Daniel Perry. Innovative presentations and some tough negotiating culminated in a total of £4,000 being awarded to the following trainees: Chris Bretherton, Sarah Abbott, Zaid Hamoodi, Sohail Nisar and Ignatius Liew. The research funding was made possible through generous contributions from the BOA/RCS England Surgical Specialty Leads (SSLs) and AOUKI.

The Congress hosted the first live audience recording of the Orthohub podcast, hosted by Kash Akhtar and Pete Bates. They were joined by a special guest, Sue Deakin, who provided a candid account of an adverse event as a consultant and how it has changed her career for the better. Thanks to a successful (and fiercely competitive) pub quiz and a brilliant gala dinner, over £2,000 was raised for Feet First Worldwide and Motec Life-UK charities. Congratulations also to Tim Petheram who was awarded the Trainer of the Year. Finally, for anyone who missed a session, recordings are available to watch on-demand on the MedAll website. The 2023 BOTA committee are already looking forward to welcoming everyone to the 2023 Congress in Edinburgh, 28th November – 1st December).