Paediatric Surgery Essentials

the essentials of knowledge in paediatric surgery

At Paediatric Surgery Essentials, we are an international group of Paediatric Surgeons with a range of backgrounds, skills and ideas and a unifying interest in medical education.  Our aim with this site is not to provide encyclopaedic knowledge or a curriculum on paediatric surgery but share short thoughts and tips as they might occur to a senior trainee in paediatric surgery in our virtual hospital, The Children’s Hospital, Virchester. This is provided as FOAMed. Each blogpost will then be stored in the appropriate “department” or can be found using the search function or the tag list. 

As a group, we may not always agree with each other; we feel that is a strength. We constantly question and challenge each other in the clinical environment and we want to do the same here. There is no house style or opinion here, we are not seeking to establish a single direction of care. What matters is that we can share our thoughts in a safe environment and we will keep an eye on each other to make sure nothing silly is said. We have an editorial board and policy to try to ensure we stay on track and deliver evidence-based opinions upon which you can make your own decisions.

The opinions, thoughts and musings on this website are attributable to the individual authors and not the team as a whole and certainly not to the individual organisations we work for, hence the virtual hospital idea. As a guide, we follow the thoughts of the General Medical Council in the UK on such education. It can be foundhere.

We also follow the advice of the GMC regarding consent. The British Medical Association also has a very useful guide to the use ofsocial media guidance(1)that we adhere to. There is an excellent summary of guidance on the provision and use of FOAMed from around the world here from the  Life in the Fast Lane. The bottom line is be safe, be sensible and don’t say anything here that you would not say in a clinical or public setting.