To reject trainee surgeon?

Please at least let your husband take your child the day of his op to be his appropriate adult. You will drive the staff mad.

A senior registrar will be in their 30-40s, with 10-20 years experience. It will not be an 18 year old medical student.

They are not a consultant so can’t work without supervision (potentially indirect supervision with the consultant elsewhere but available to attend quickly if needed), but they will still be very experienced.

I became a consultant aged 38, so had 14 years of experience. There was absolutely no difference in my clinical work between ST7 and first year consultant. The difference was that I was directly responsible for managing my service, the clinics and procedure lists etc were exactly the same.

Please stop referring to the surgeon as a “student”. Students absolutely do not do operations. If this is how you’re framing it of course it will sound alarming.

Ophthalmologists do 5 years of med school (during which time they are students), then two years as fully qualified but very junior doctors before embarking on a seven year ophthalmology training programme to fully qualify as an ophthalmologist. The person doing the surgery may well be a matter of weeks or months from being consultant, or a bit earlier in their 7 year training. There will always be a “first time” for each procedure but usually they’ll have proven competency in many of the skills used, accumulated through other procedures. This will not be their first ever surgery.

What I’m trying to say is this isn’t some 19 year old oik off the school bus. This is a fully qualified doctor with proven competency under direct supervision of a teaching consultant. Maybe you could ask for more info re the level of training and when the consultant would step in etc to put your mind at ease.

PS. Some of the most skilled doctors I’ve ever met have been registrars - often they’re doing a lot more of the hands on day to day stuff than the consultant who will tend to take more complex procedures.

Your husband isn’t even sure what he actually even said, is he?

To be fair, night shifts are brutal.

My medical profession family member who does them really struggles with them.

the op is worried. The pp is knackered and should be sleeping.

can’t we call just cut each other some slack?

@RunningThroughMyHead it might worth gathering up a list of the questions you want answers for and ring the number of the consultant’s secretary and ask her if there’s an email address you can email them to and see if she can come back to you?

I am not at all bedside though am I?
I am in bed.
You do realise our bedside manner is for when we are at the bedside.

I had an operation during pregnancy which was incredibly stressful and had a similar situation - I asked for clarification from my consultant and he explained who the other doctor was, how experienced they were of this specific surgery and how the operation would work (was an unusual surgery which required a specialist surgeon, not just any obstetrician). It put my mind at rest and you are entitled to ask for that clarification.

U less you are paying you don’t have a say unless you go to the back of the queue, you sound very entitled, they’ll be supervised and wouldn’t be put in the position unless they had shown they process the skills.
Put your hand in your pocket and pay instead of moaning.

It is also likely that the person anaesthetising your child may also be "a student".

Was it neglect though that caused his death, have you seen the paperwork, read the notes, attended the inquest, do you know what surgery he was having, the risks, are you privy to hospital medical history? Did he die on the table or post op?

Neglect is very hard to prove. Due to the many other factors that need to be taken into account.

As others have said, it'll be a senior registrar. And the consultant will be supervising so it's fine.

I don't think you have a choice - when you go public the idea is they have to train people and use whoever they can (as long as it is safe) so you either accept the allocation or go private when you can pick who you want to to do the surgery. If they let everyone pick NHS would not be able to survive so its important that they say no to these requests. NHS is a basic level service. If you are very concerned and want choice in who does the surgery it might be worth speaking to your insurance and seeing if you can get it done privately instead.

I think your response is natural, most parents want the best for their children.

I also think that this strong reaction is coming from a place of not being in control. You can't control the outcome of the surgery, so are finding it difficult to process. It is understandably terrifying. So, if you feel really, really strongly then I think you should look at self funding and picking a consultant who you feel more comfortable with.

However, in no way will your child be put at additional risk using a registrar. Every step will be so controlled and perfected under the consultants watch. The registrar will have had so much training. And you'll have two pairs of eyes in the room - controlling every step so precisely that you could argue that there is less room for error than an "old-hat" consultant with a big name and reputation.

You seem to be insinuating that you work in the medical field. It's a concern that this appears your bedside manner when a concerned parent, with no medical knowledge, is worried about the success of a surgery that will affect their beloved childs' sight.

Condescending and apathetic are just a couple of adjectives that spring to mind for you - and two nightshifts don't justify that.

I think you should ask all the questions you like, and hopefully they will reassure you, but ultimately I think I would trust the consultant on who is qualified to perform the operation!

The "Mr" (or indeed "Miss" title) comes when junior doctors pass their first lot of surgical exams in the first section of their surgical specialist training, so within the first 4-5 years of qualifying.

It will take another 4-5 years (and very likely more with research time if you do a PhD and then fellowships for a particular sub specialty) before you become a consultant. (Medical consultants retain the Dr title throughout and some Obs/Gynae surgeons use Dr, as do many dentists.)

I work in the NHS and unfortunately you have absolutely no say in who operates. Even if you think you do, they can change surgeons at any moment. They move residents and fellows around according to lists and what cases they need for their training.

Saying that, they won’t be a junior student, they’ll be a doctor who has virtually finished their training. They’ll be closely supervised.

I often find these supervised surgeries better in some ways, you have 2 highly trained professionals concentrating fully, discussing as they go.
They’ll often have longer operation times too, less rushing.

If you want control over who does the surgery, you’ll need to pay privately.

I think you need to explore getting this done privately and then you can be assured of getting 'the consultant.'

I just don’t want any blips
You can't have such insurance from anyone. Experienced consultants are not God's, they too make mistakes and sometimes can be even more prone to them as experience can lead to less attention to detail. This is seen with pilots. Planess crashes happen even when the pilot has many thousands of flight hours behind them. Do you ask how experience the pilots are everything you get on a plane.

The surgeon in charge will be clinically responsible for the surgery themselves, so you can be assured they will make sure as much as they can that nothing goes wrong.

My eldest had a difficult operation on her wye when she was 7 years old. Another child in her class had the exact sane surgery 6 months before. The surgeon was extremely experienced. The other child was a total success, my child was only partial.