Education: Bettina Lieske

I am a fifth year SpR in General Surgery in the Oxford Deanery, my subspecialty interest is colorectal surgery.  I have been on ASiT Council as Oxford Regional Representative since July 2007.

I have a keen interest in medical education, and have now taken over the lead in developing ASiT’s educational portfolio from Will Hawkins. Over the last year we have been able to expand the offers to our members on an unprecedented number of opportunities, including sponsored places on courses, fellowships and courses exclusive to ASiT members. The ASiT Surgical Skills and Education Training Scheme (ASSETS) has been created by Will to allow a series of inexpensive courses that trainees can choose to attend more than once to develop their skills in key areas.  All courses so far have created excellent feedback and are increasingly popular.  Will is still involved in expanding these courses and if you are interested in running courses for ASiT locally please let either me or him know.

Support from our industry partners has been critical in getting these courses and other opportunities off the ground and I would like to thank them for their continued support.  

As part of my role I also sit on the committee for the IMRCS.  The recent changes in this examination have been met with widespread criticism, but the committee are open to suggestions and keen for trainee representation and opinion. I attended the most recent digest of the OSCEs in London in May and was impressed how well run and organised they were. I also had a chance to speak to candidates before and after the examination, and the documents that Will has written can be seen in the documents section of this website. I am planning an update on this very shortly.

Our conference builds from strength to strength each year and Hull 2010 was a huge success.  All pre-conference courses were well attended, and I am planning to offer a similar programme at the next conference.

I would like to encourage all of you to please get in touch if you think ASiT should offer educational opportunities in specific areas that you think are underrepresented at present. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss any ideas that you may have! You may find yourself part of one of the next pre-conference courses, or involved in a course at local level.