SE07 IMPLEMENTING A NEW CURRICULUM IN SURGERY: WHAT IS GOING WELL AND LESSONS LEARNED

Abstract

The project has been divided into five phases; 1 Development of standards and associated assessments; completed october 2005 2 Needs analysis of the educational resources, capacity and systems to eliver training; october 2004–april 2005 3 Piloting the new curriculum; october 2005–july 2007 4 Full implementation of the new curriculum; august 2007 5 Research programme to evaluate the new curriculum; october 2005 onwards and managed using a standard Kotter (1) organisational change model. The needs analysis assessment of educational resources, capacity and systems involving all key stakeholders in the process uncovered serious concerns of corporate and financial governance in those agencies involved in surgical training. This can be succinctly described as: 1 Mixed allegiances 2 Unclear decision rights 3 Non transparent fund flows 4 Competing priorities and accountabilities concluding, along with an independent report, that “the quality of surgical education is deteriorating quite rapidly to such an extent that remedial measures are becoming increasingly urgent.” To address this surgical training is being reconfigured around Postgraduate Schools of Surgery, with clear roles and responsibilities for key members of the surgical education team. Lessons learned include the importance of understanding the political environment and the need for ‘alignment’ in order to be effective; how this can be seen as ‘selling the profession’; that planning and implementation should be undertaken by the same group wherever possible; the difficulty of maintaining energy levels; and the importance of communication – you cannot have enough of it.