RACS ASC 2022: Diversity in a Dispersed Workplace

I am pleased to announce that plans for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) Annual Scientific Congress (ASC) 2022 in Brisbane are progressing well. The theme is ‘Sustainability in the Dispersed Workplace’, which provides a broad platform of many great areas to explore. You’ll hear more in the coming months from the Executive, led by Professor Chris Pyke as Convener, ably assisted by Professor Deborah Bailey, Scientific Convener, Dr Heidi Peverill, Dr Jennifer Ah Toy and Dr Chris Allan.

With half of all Australians currently locked down, the reality of COVID-19 is front of mind once more, and with the pace of our vaccine rollout it is very likely that we are looking at a hybrid congress for next May. International borders are unlikely to be open, although hopefully our bubble with Aotearoa New Zealand will be active once again. We all know there were some technical challenges with RACS ASC 2021, and we are working hard to improve the digital platform for 2022. The content however, was excellent, and the opportunity to engage a wide range of international speakers to present virtually is being taken by our section conveners for Brisbane. We are, of course, also looking at the range of outstanding local talent within the state, and within Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

The program is shaping up well, and we are on track to have the provisional program to you by October. We have an outline of the plenary sessions, and while we are still waiting for some speakers to confirm, we have Dr Bridget Clancy delivering the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Surgery lecture. Bridget is spearheading the RACS regional and rural initiative and will join Friday’s plenary, entitled ‘The Dispersed Workplace – Lessons from the Extremes’. Also speaking will be Dr McLee Matthew, known to many in Melbourne from his time training at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne. We are very pleased to welcome McLee as the visitor for Paediatric Surgery, and look forward to hearing about his experience in Papua New Guinea, among other topics.

It seems like I’m working backwards, so Thursday’s plenary is titled ‘Sustainable Cultural Safety’ and will give us the opportunity to contemplate the new RACS 10th competency. Wednesday’s plenary is around ‘Sustainability as an Everyday Event’ and Heidi will update us on this soon.

We very much hope our president, Dr Sally Langley will join us to open RACS ASC 2022 on Tuesday morning. Her address will be followed by the plenary on ‘Sustainability in Education’. We have confirmed presentations by Graham Beaumont , who will speak on the topic of ‘Sustaining proficiency: the journey’ and Professor Johannes Fagan of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa, who will speak on the topic ‘Delivering and modernising specialist examinations through COVID-19’. As we know, the Fellowship Exam process was challenging for the last 18 months; hopefully Professor Fagan will provide us with some insights.

Keep an eye out on the website, and don’t forget to check the socials, as our Communications team, led by Abderazzaq Noor, will be updating us regularly.

I’m looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible in Brisbane.

Dr Liz McLeod FRACS, RACS ASC Coordinator