SRTC Meetings

For their participants, Senior Registrar Travelling Club (SRTC) meetings were highly prized learning opportunities away from their base units.

Until the mid 1990s senior trainees were tied to single or adjacent units until becoming consultants themselves. Depending upon the areas of expertise of the Consultants they worked for, they might not then be exposed to, and learn, the breadth of the specialty. In 1992 then Chair of the club, Brian Sommerlad, with funded study leave to attend under pressure, wrote to all health authorities supporting the cause. He wrote “This club has been in existence since 1972 and has always had a very high academic profile. We would regard it as an essential part of the senior registrar’s education, and strongly support them being able to attend the two meetings per year with appropriate funding.” Meetings were held in a rotating host unit, or group of units where closely adjacent, as in London.

Over two days, there were didactic lectures given by the local consultants, as well as live operating demonstrations in theatre. The particular sub-specialty interests of the unit’s consultants would act as a theme to be discussed and demonstrated. In this way, attending a series of such meetings would give trainees the widest possible exposure to elements of plastic surgery they may not otherwise see in their base units. The part programme shown on this page from the 1973 Stoke Mandeville/Oxford meeting is typical. The Senior Registrars also used the opportunity to get up to speed with, and try to influence, the prevailing medical politics of the day, particularly if it affected them directly.