Smash hit

TOTAL 5,218: 281 women and 4,937 men

Closing the gap on US

WHERE once surgery was the domain of white, public-school-educated males such as the caricature consultant Sir Lancelot Spratt, the reforms are designed to attract allcomers to one of medicine’s most challenging disciplines (Sam Lister writes).

Under the new curriculum, medical school graduates will be able to start to hone skills specific to surgical specialties within a year of leaving medical school, rather than seven years.

All junior doctors should be able to become consultants in one of the nine surgical specialties — general, cardiothoracic, paediatric, neurosurgery, otolaryngology, plastic, trauma and orthopaedic, urology, and oral and maxillofacial surgery — within seven years, but more complex disciplines such as renal and inner-ear operations will require further training.

The new programme will bring Britain closer to American standards, where the average for most specialities is a five-year residency programme straight from medical school.

'I missed many family events'

WHEN Linda de Cossart became a consultant surgeon at the age of 40, it was 16 years after she started surgical training after her graduation from medical school (Sam Lister writes). Ms de Cossart, a vascular expert in the specialty of general surgery, said that for woman with family commitments, the extensive period of training could come at a considerable personal cost.

“We have been breaking down the barriers slowly, but it has been hard for women who want or have a family, and most likely a husband in a profession, as well as being in training. I remember time commitments being pretty draconian, with a lot of missed family events, birthdays and holidays,” she said.

For Ms de Cossart, who wanted to be a surgeon since her schooldays in the 1960s, the decision was easier, but she said she had been a rarity in her professional life. “There were only about half a dozen other women compared with more than 80 men,” she said. “You had to be tough and stand your ground.”

As a trainee, Ms de Cossart was helped by working with Professor Averil Mansfield, a former vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, who she said provided a powerful female role model.

Now lead clinician in the department of general surgery at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Cheshire, Ms de Cossart said that efforts were being made to encourage women to take up surgical disciplines that had appeared so unappealing to many of their predecessors.

“There was a huge group of women who never considered doing surgery, because they regarded it as involving a huge amount of training for a tedious, difficult and male-dominated role.”

Ms de Cossart, 56, welcomed the reforms to the curriculum, although she cautioned against a system that might not let doctors have sufficient practice at highly skilled procedures. “By the time I became a consultant I was very experienced. I could engage with the other skills of surgeons, such as educating junior doctors, which if I had been less experienced I would have struggled with,” she said.

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