National Selection into General Surgery: A Pilot Study

Abstract

General surgery training in England ceased to run through to completion of training from specialty training level one (ST1) as of August 2010. Instead, a second competitive interview to enter ST3 has been introduced. As a result, up to 180 ST3 vacancies in general surgery should become available for recruitment each year in England, according to figures obtained from Medical Specialty Training (England), the successor to Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) (personal communication). The general surgery specialist advisory committee (SAC) was asked in 2008 by MMC to consider how best to appoint to these ST3 posts. Experience from other surgical specialties has shown that a national selection process offers the potential to recruit the best core surgical trainees.