the 36 bulletin
Basic surgical skills workshop
National Careers Day 2016 On a crisp Saturday in November, we welcomed around 200 medical students, sixth form students and doctors to the annual SCTS Education/RSM Cardiothoracic Careers Day, held this year at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Jeesoo Choi, Tang Chu Yik & Aman Coonar
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ollowing the success at Cambridge in 2015 and Bristol in 2014, a committee of students from King’s College London and Barts and the London medical schools came together to keep the momentum up and make this year’s event even bigger! The day was introduced by Alex Shipolini, Consultant Cardiac Surgeon at Barts and Aman Coonar, Consultant Thoracic Surgeon from Cambridge and lead for student engagement. The morning then kicked
off with our talks on the Cardiothoracic subspecialties, which were given by: l Michael Sabetai – Adult Cardiac (Consultant Cardiac Surgeon, St Thomas’) l Ashok Kar – Thoracic (Registrar, Barts) l Catherine Sudarshan – Transplant (Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Papworth Hospital) l Jonathan Unsworth-White – Training Pathway (Consultant Cardiac Surgeon, Derriford Hospital)
The talks were stimulating and thought-provoking, giving our delegates a realistic insight into the day-to-day life of a Cardiothoracic Surgeon, how medical students can get involved and advice on applying for the training programme. There was great engagement and networking with our speakers and we hope many were inspired by our speakers. The Women in Cardiothoracic Surgery question and answer panel was an exciting new feature this year, chaired by Farah Bhatti (Professor & Consultant Cardiac Surgeon, Morriston Hospital) with Catherine Sudarshan and Melanie Jenkins (Consultant Thoracic Surgeon, St George’s Hospital). With Cardiothoracic Surgery having historically been a male-dominated specialty, this was an amazing opportunity to dispel any preconceptions. Students asked insightful