Education: Will Hawkins

I am a fifth year SpR in Upper GI/General Surgery in the West Midlands.  I have been on ASiT council for the last four years representing the region with Sarah Rastall.  

I have a keen interest in medical education and assessment, so I am taking a lead in developing ASiT’s educational portfolio.  Over the last year we have been able to offer our members 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) is being created to create a series of inexpensive courses that trainees can choose to attend more than once to develop their skills in key areas.  The courses that we have already started running have created excellent feedback and are increasingly popular.  The courses are designed to be reproducible and if you are interested in running courses for ASiT locally please let me 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. 

Part of my role also sees me being the first trainee to 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 the documents that I have written for this purpose have been well received.  These can be seen in the documents section of this website.

Our conference builds from strength to strength each year and we intend to continue this trend in Hull in March 2010.  We will again be running a number of  pre-conference courses, so please register your interest if you are coming to the conference.  Keep an eye on the website as the programme develops.