|
11 March 2013 |
 Surgeons’ News Editor John Duncan introduces our cover feature
Whatever our individual views about the proposed changes to pensions which are under discussion, the element which excites the greatest concern in the theatre coffee rooms of the country is the increase in the retirement age.
For clinicians in front line, acute specialties the prospect of working to 68 (a 20% increase in working life) has both professional and personal concerns. If we set aside these personal issues which arise from a change in expectation of when retirement would come, the professional aspects seem not to have been adequately explored.
|
|
|
11 March 2013 |
 With surgeons in the NHS facing the prospect of working in acute specialties until 68, Elaine Griffiths reviews the implications of aging and stress on surgical skills
Safe surgical practise is a complex combination of technical and non-technical skills. Although fine motor skills and technical skills are essential, skills such as judgment; problem-solving; emergency response skills and decision making are central components of surgical expertise and are important factors in determining operative success.1,2
|
|
11 March 2013 |
 The workload expectations placed on older consultants must change or else we risk endangering patient safety and the health of consultants themselves, so writes Dr William Harrop-Griffiths
First of all, some admissions: I am 54 years old; I have been on call for the NHS for 31 of those years; although I do not yet have any grey hairs, I daily expect some to appear; I have only one arthritic joint in my body (the distal interphalangeal joint of my left little finger as it happens); my laugh lines are no longer laugh lines; I enjoy my clinical work hugely; I want to stop doing on call.
|
|
11 March 2013 |
 Professor Bill Reid provides a personal view on the future shape of the profession
When the Editor asked if I would opine on the future of the profession for this issue of Surgeons’ News, I was reminded of the capricious nature of futurology. William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, one of the most prominent Scots scientists of all time, discoverer of absolute zero and inventor of the eponymous scale, famously manifested ‘foot-in-mouth syndrome’ on several occasions, with his uncannily inaccurate predictions – “X-rays will prove to be a hoax", "Radio has no future", and the clincher, "Heavier than air flying machines are impossible."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Print edition designed by CMYK Design, Edinburgh www.cmyk-design.co.uk
