A new appointment
Associate Professor Cutbush has joined the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Anatomy Sub-Committee for the Surgical Science Examinations and Clinical Examinations Committee.
What the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons does
The College is the body responsible for surgical training, examination and professional standards in Australia and New Zealand. It sets the curriculum that surgical trainees follow, runs the examinations they must pass, accredits the hospital posts in which training takes place, and requires surgeons already in practice to take part in continuing professional development. A surgeon who completes training and passes the examinations is admitted as a Fellow of the College and uses the letters FRACS. The College is therefore the mechanism by which the standard expected of a specialist surgeon is defined and tested.
The examinations these committees oversee
Surgical trainees sit a surgical sciences examination relatively early in training, covering anatomy, physiology and pathology as they apply to operating. Later they sit a clinical examination that tests the assessment and management of patients. Anatomy carries particular weight in orthopaedics, because an operation is planned and performed in relation to structures the surgeon cannot see until the approach is made, and the nerves and vessels that must be protected lie in predictable places. The committees that write and mark these examinations decide what is asked, how answers are judged and where the pass mark sits. That is how a standard is kept consistent from one year to the next and between candidates examined in different cities.
Why practising surgeons take on committee work
Examination committees are staffed by surgeons who are still operating, because the questions have to reflect what is genuinely needed in practice rather than what happens to be convenient to examine. The work is done outside clinical commitments and is unpaid. For the surgeon involved there is a return of sorts, in that writing and marking anatomy and basic science questions requires that knowledge to be kept current and precise rather than allowed to settle into habit.