SICOT

The SICOT Young Surgeons Committee (YSC) is vibrant and comprises SICOT members in the early years of their careers. YSC has endeavoured to organise educational activities suited for young surgeons and trainees preparing for their exit exams. In 2018, the YSC Geographical representatives were formed to support the working of the YSC Chair and Vice Chair. There are 12 YSC geographical representatives from around the world representing a significant part of the SICOT population. This has enabled constructive discussion amongst the group and planning of various educational activities. One of the main aims of the YSC is to organise educational activities at the SICOT Annual Congress aiming towards the younger surgeons. To this end, there have been four symposia at each SICOT Annual Congress organised by the YSC.

The 2019 SICOT Annual Congress in Muscat, Oman included the following 4 symposiums:

•  Difficult Cases Discussion in Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA)

•  Training the Next Generation of Orthopaedic Surgeons

•  Literature Searching Techniques and Databases

•  Difficult Cases Discussion in Spine Surgery

All four YSC symposiums were well attended. The ‘Literature Searching Techniques’ symposium provided practical tips of how to utilise different online databases for literature searching purposes. The ‘Difficult Cases Discussion in THA’ symposium has been consistently one of the best YSC symposiums over the last few years. For the first time, the ‘Difficult Cases Discussion in Spine Surgery’ was organised and this was well received with great feedback from attendees. ‘Training the Next Generation of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ was a thought-provoking session prompting us to look at ways to improve training in this ever changing fast paced working environment. The format of the difficult cases discussion symposiums includes young surgeons from the YSC presenting difficult cases encountered in their own practice and challenging a group of expert panellists on how they would treat those cases and then presenting the final outcomes of those patients. Those symposiums have been a great addition to our scientific programme bringing together the younger generation and experienced surgeons and the audience engage thoroughly with such discussions.

Due to the popularity of the above symposiums, we are planning to continue with the first 2 symposiums utilising the experience of various world experts on the topics and cases to be discussed and will add the following YSC symposiums for the 2020 SICOT Annual Congress to be held in Budapest:

• Difficult Cases Discussion in Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA)

• Difficult Cases Discussion in Paediatric Surgery

SIGNEL is the SICOT educational platform with a significant amount of available educational material. We are currently working with the Education/Website Committees to re-design the SIGNEL website to accommodate all the YSC educational activities in order to maximise the benefits of this website especially to young surgeons preparing for their exit exams.

There are several VUMEDI webinars which have been organised by YSC members – tibial shaft fractures, distal tibial fractures, traumatic foot and infection in THA. These are all available on VUMEDI and will soon be available on the SIGNEL website. We are working on organising VUMEDI webinars to cover the entire SICOT Diploma Exam syllabus.

The SICOT International Trainees meeting is another essential YSC activity which aims at popularising the SICOT YSC in various geographical locations. Young surgeons are encouraged to present their research work and challenging cases at a SICOT International meeting provided for them locally. Several prizes are handed out to the best presentations and our most recent International Trainees meeting has just been held in Ismailia, Egypt, in February 2020 with great feedback from all attendees.

The SICOT YSC also organises a YSC social activity every year at the SICOT Annual Congress which aims at YSC members networking with their peers from around the world. The last social activity we held was in Montreal reserving places for the Montreal Canadiens hockey game which was well attended. We are in the process of finalising our upcoming social activity for this year in Budapest and look forward to your active involvement in this event!