Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery (2011) 64, e87

CORRESPONDENCE AND COMMUNICATION

Re: Davis et al. How to improveplastic surgery knowledge, skillsand career interest inundergraduates in one day. JPRAS2010:63;1677e1681

Dear Sirs,

The recently published work by Davis et al. was read withinterest by members of the Cardiff University SurgicalSociety at our fortnightly journal club. The BAPRASUndergraduate Course was attended by some of ourmembers, who found it thoroughly enjoyable and com-mended the event for providing an informative insight intoa career in plastic surgery, a speciality within surgery that isnot covered by the medical curriculum in Cardiff.

Due to the absence of plastic surgery exposure withinthe medical curriculum in Cardiff we were not surprised bythe marked decline in plastic surgery teaching that hasoccurred throughout the UK since the 1980s, a fact high-lighted by Davis et al. This data led us to discuss the factthat surgery in general now receives significantly lessdedicated curriculum time when compared to medicalspecialities. Reasons for this relate to recent changesimposed by the GMC, which require medical schools tofocus more on community medicine, as well as the demo-graphic shift in medical school applicants, whereby morethan 60% of entrants are now female, which itself has beenshown to be a strong negative predictor for pursuinga career in surgery.1 As medical students with a stronginterest in surgery we are dismayed by this situation,especially due to the fact that surgery still representsa competitive branch of medicine, whereby access intopostgraduate training programmes may be hindered due tolimited opportunities in certain medical schools. Wetherefore applaud the efforts of professional organisations

DOI of original article: 10.1016/j.bjps.2009.10.023.

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doi:10.1016/j.bjps.2010.11.003

such as BAPRAS and The Royal College of Surgeons, Englandto increase exposure, and hope that they continue withsimilar schemes.

Whilst this event was organised on a national level, wefeel that university surgical societies are capable oforganising events at a more local level. The key advantagesof this being the ability to address specific areas of surgerythat are not covered by the medical school in question, aswell as providing easier and more universal access to theevent at the organising medical school. With this in mind,Cardiff University Surgical Society participates in an annualexchange programme with the University of Bristol SurgicalSociety, and this year the event in Bristol, which will takeplace in early December, will be a plastic surgery workshop.The event will follow a similar format to the BAPRASUndergraduate Course and will include: talks from plasticsurgeons, surgical skills and a quiz. As a society we arelooking forward to this and hope that we will be able toreplicate the success of your event.

Ethical considerations

None.

Conflicts of interest

None.

Reference

1. Tambyraja AL, McCrea CA. Attitudes of medical studentstowards careers in general surgery. World J Surg 2008;32:960e3.

John MasonVitaliy Androshchuk

Holly MorganCardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom

E-mail address: masonjd1@cardiff.ac.uk

BritishAssociationofPlastic,ReconstructiveandAestheticSurgeons.All rightsreserved.