The Group Manager, Future of Health Workforce, at Te Whatu Ora – Health NZ circulated to colleges a draft set of principles designed to support and regularise the current range of ad hoc training of surgical registrars in private settings. The intention was to use these for a suite of early pilots to deal with issues such as Registrars facing undue pressure to provide out-of-hours support for private services.
Given the current focus on the outsourcing of surgical waiting lists, and the expected increase in longer term training contracts, we proposed a set of principles to apply in both situations. We also proposed a two-part purpose statement which recognises the private sector as an important partner in increasing the health system capacity to train surgical registrars:
• To increase the health system capacity to train surgical registrars - Surgeons working in private settings have trained on publicly funded vocational training schemes. Their social licence to operate carries an obligation to contribute to vocational training for future surgeons. The ability to train in the private setting on outsourced public patients fulfils this responsibility.
• Training surgical registrars operating in private ensures training registrars get exposure to cases with low volumes delivered in public – so they can complete vocational training in a timely manner and with sufficient exposure to different case types to practice safely as an SMO.
We will continue discussions with Te Whatu Ora and the Council of Medical Colleges to embed these Principles as private training of Surgical Registrars increases.
RACS Proposal - Principles for private training of Surgical registrars (PDF 114.9KB).