The course
Dr Cutbush attended the Nice Shoulder Course in June 2016. It is a long-established international shoulder course, held every two years in Nice, France.
Pictured with George Athwal, Ashish Gupta and Des Bokor.
What an international shoulder course is
A shoulder course is a meeting organised around teaching rather than around the presentation of new research, although most include both. Courses that run on a fixed cycle in the same place tend to attract a consistent faculty, which allows a programme to develop from one edition to the next rather than being assembled again each time.
Attending is a practical matter as much as an academic one. Shoulder surgery covers a wide field, from instability in young athletes through rotator cuff tears to arthritis in older patients, and the techniques and implants used in each area continue to change. A surgeon who only reads about those changes sees the conclusions. A surgeon who attends a course hears the discussion around them, including the cases that did not go as expected and the reasons a technique was taken up or set aside. Individual results vary.
Why the international aspect matters
Practice differs between countries for reasons that have little to do with the evidence. Different implants are approved and available, health systems fund treatment differently, and training traditions vary. Meeting surgeons working in other systems is a reliable way of noticing the assumptions built into your own.
It is also how working relationships form. Most multi-centre research, and most exchanges of fellows between units, begin with people having met at a meeting of this kind and then continuing the conversation afterwards.
Related information
See also our posts on the International Shoulder Symposium in Paris and visiting George Athwal, and our shoulder surgery, shoulder fellowship and research pages.