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Dr Andrew Sharman shows us that rotational training, while offering a broad range of training opportunities, doesn’t come without its challenges and tells us what the Faculty is doing to overcome them.

Another year goes by, and again I am humbled by the resilience and resolve of our resident doctors.

Last year, responses to our intensivists in training (IiT) survey were overall very positive for ICM training, with resident doctors appreciating their trainers. Also, our regional advisors survey demonstrated how much excellent work is ongoing across the country. Exam and regional teaching courses, mentoring programmes, and the offering of a variety of Special Skill Years (SSYs) are just some examples of an ever-growing list of successes.

Mrs Shivalkar was a 78-year-old patient with debilitating co-morbidities, scheduled for elective revision hip-surgery at a stand-alone surgical unit without level-2 or level-3 care facilities. Intraoperatively, significant hypotension was poorly recognised and treated. By the time care was escalated, she had developed severe metabolic acidosis and multi-organ failure leading to her death.

The coroner issued a ‘Report to Prevent Future Deaths’ to the RCoA and the Royal College of Surgeons for action. From our review of the available information, the lessons to be learnt by our specialty  were related broadly to risk assessment, remote-site working and team working. My previous article (Part 1) addressed the first two areas, while this follow-up article focuses on team working and the role of multidisciplinary team (MDT) training.