Each year The British Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgery sponsors The Mark Paterson Travelling Fellowship which allows three young orthopaedic consultants (usually senior trainees or new consultants) to travel round a number of centres in the run up to the EFORT congress in the country hosting the EFORT meeting. This year’s travelling fellowship was in the UK in the run up to the 2014 London meeting.
The fellowship is entitled to Mr Mark Paterson, a well-known UK children’s orthopaedic surgeon, who died in 2013 at the age of 59. He was a Member of Council of The British Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgery, an Associate Editor of The Bone & Joint Journal (BJJ) and President of the Orthopaedic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. The British Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgery Council and EFORT renamed the fellowship to honour Mark and to help inspire young orthopaedic surgeons.
Travelling to the UK and visiting leading hospitals in the UK healthcare system has been a journey from tradition to the advances of the scientific community. There were three of us, Alberto Di Martino from Rome, Egemen Altan from Turkey and Michal Skowronek from Poland, representing an interesting mix of experiences from a cultural and professional perspective. We also had different surgical interests, Alberto is a Spinal and Oncology surgeon, Egemen is interested in Sports’ Medicine and upper limb surgery, and Michal in hip and trauma surgery.
The fellowship consisted of visits to Hospitals and healthcare centres in London, Stanmore, Nottingham and Edinburgh before attending the combined British Orthopaedic Association/EFORT meeting in London. Our first stop on British soil was to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH), starting with the London Implant Retrieval Centre (LIRC). This was founded to collect and analyse failed (retrieved) implants from around the world, to provide important insights into the in situ performance of orthopaedic devices and provide critical clues into mechanisms of failure and success. We were lucky the following day to visit the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London which included a private tour of the Hunterian Museum, where we discovered the unusual life of John Hunter and his anatomic and surgical works that influenced future surgical, medical and dental science. This was followed by a visit to Buckingham Street the home of BJJ to meet the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Fares Haddad, Emma Vodden (Head of Editorial Publishing Services and organiser of the Fellowship) and with the Editor Emeritus, Mr James Scott. We had information about the history of the BJJ, the changes it has undergone in the last few years and above all, about the challenges BJJ will face in the future. In the afternoon, Professor Haddad hosted a conference at the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health where we each gave lectures in our chosen areas.
Next, we visited Nottingham and we were hosted by Mr Ben Ollivere, Associate Professor in Trauma, Editor-in-Chief of Bone & Joint360and Editorial Secretary of the British Orthopaedic Association. We visited both the Nottingham City Hospital and the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology at the Queen’s Medical Centre, which is one of the leading trauma centres in Europe, and serves a population of over four million receiving emergency trauma cases from the Midlands. There we learnt about the development of the new trauma network in UK as well as enjoying some of the local Nottingham sights. Our final centre was Edinburgh, where we were hosted by Professor Hamish Simpson at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. The interest in genuine research and evidence based surgery characterised our stay in Edinburgh. After returning to London, we met Sanni Hiltunen who arranged the Fellowship from the EFORT side. We then attended sessions of specialist interest, and had the chance to meet friends and colleagues attending the meeting from all over Europe.
From my personal point of view, whenever I attend the EFORT Congress I remember my first EFORT in Helsinki in 2003. That was my first international congress, and I was excited about the opportunity to be there. The environment of that congress significantly conditioned my professional career, since there I made new contacts and created the opportunity for my one-year research fellowship. All the subsequent EFORT congresses have mirrored this and presented their own opportunity to know people, develop projects and experience different cultures.
Of course, London is one of the most attractive cities in the world, and the combined meeting with the British Orthopaedic Association represented a unique opportunity. Together with many other surgeons from Italy, we had oral presentations and poster sessions to present our recent work from the Italian Orthopaedic Society Bone Metastasis Study Group (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1
Alberto (right) at the BOA/EFORT Congress, together with the Secretary of the Italian Orthopaedic Society - SIOT (Dr. A. Piccioli), during the presentation of a poster regarding a study of the “Italian Orthopaedic Society Bone Metastasis Study Group”.
The EFORT congress this year was also an instructional occasion to learn from distinguished speakers about the latest results of current research and clinical practice. Since my main fields of interest are Spine and Oncology, I took the chance to attend courses about these topics. While some of the sessions had speakers from around Europe, other sessions were directed by BOA members. I had the chance to attend tumour sessions on each of the congress days, such as the “Clinical Case” sessions on Tumours, moderated by Professor Capanna and Professor Cannon on Wednesday, then the Symposium on Advances in Upper Limb Tumour Reconstruction on Thursday. A particular highlight of the conference for me was attending several of the interesting sessions on Spine Surgery. The BOA-BASS (British Association of Spinal Surgeons) was aimed at revalidation and cover the whole gamut of emergent and urgent spinal pathologies including spinal metastases, cauda equine and spinal infections. This well-run session provided attendees with a complete education surrounding what can often be challenging clinical and diagnostic cases. The EFORT congress has also allowed time to view at the latest products from orthopaedic implant companies, and there were a wide range of Industry Symposia covering almost every possible topic of interest.
The final highlight of theEFORTcongress was the BOA Presidential Guest Lecture. The lecture was moderated by Professor Briggs and given by Lord Bernard Riberio, and was entitled: “Meeting the challenge of reconfiguring health services in the 21st century” (Fig. 2). It was of particular interest to all of us, at the end of a Travelling Fellowship in the UK, to understand the passage from tradition to innovation we had observed in each city and hospital we visited.
Fig. 2
A picture of the Presidential Lecture of Lord Bernard Riberio at the BOA/EFORT Congress.
During our fellowship we understood that to to become an independent surgeon in the UK requires a long investment of time and that the level of education and practice is constant and progressive over the years. We met a lot of residents who were just happy to have ‘the numbers’, and ready to leave their previous city, hospital and friends to complete their registrar training. We realised, however, that after a long period of training, many opportunities are given to those who finish residency, and apply for senior fellowships, PhD programs or consultant positions. Meeting people, old and new friends (Fig. 3), exchanging ideas, and creating connections are all part of the EFORT spirit.
Fig. 3
Professor Fares Haddad with Alberto, Michal and his fellows at the annualBone & Joint Journal cocktail reception during the BOA/EFORT congress.
