Consultant Paediatric Otolaryngologist Mr Steven Powell looks at the importance of good paediatric surgical care.
Many surgeons operate on children as part of their role, but how many have had specialist training in generic paediatric skills to manage their care most effectively?
Paediatric surgical care across all specialties has become increasingly centralised to specialist centres over recent years. This can result in decreased paediatric exposure for surgical teams in non-specialist centres, and the loss of confidence in carrying out appropriate secondary level surgical care close to home. All hospitals can face paediatric surgical emergency care and may take paediatric elective surgical referrals. In specialist centres, surgical teams may have paediatric emergency commitments that they do not meet in day-to-day practice.
It is important that the surgical teams across all specialties feel confident with the issues that are unique to paediatrics to enable them to deliver high quality and safe care.
Understanding these issues are also core foundations to the training of every surgeon.
The unique Surgery and the Child course offers a one-day focused training in paediatric aspects of surgical care delivered by an expert faculty of paediatricians, surgeons, psychologists and anaesthetists.
Using focused lectures on key knowledge objectives and interactive small group case based discussions, this course will equip surgeons who treat children with paediatric knowledge and skills to enable them to confidently and safely deal with paediatric surgical care.
Delegates after attending this course will have improved in their ability to:
- Place their own paediatric surgical practice within a regional and national context
- Appropriately manage shared decision-making and consent in a paediatric setting
- Communicate effectively with paediatric patients
- Understand how to manage the deteriorating child
- Discuss the issues around children with disabilities and how best to meet their needs
- Explain the responsibilities for child protection in surgical care
- Discuss the differences between paediatric and adult trauma
- Describe latest developments in paediatric anaesthesia and how these impact on appropriate listing of surgical patients and the surgery undertaken (age, safety, pre-assessment, pain)
Registration for this course is FREE for trainees registering for the Triennial/ICOSET Conference.