Hello everyone,
I hope you’re all settling into the new term, and for those new to Aberdeen that you are beginning to get your bearings. It was great getting to meet many of you over the Fresher’s Fayre, and I hope you’ll see from the following post that we have lots of exciting events planned for the term ahead.
For returning students and those who were a part of Ogston last year, you will be aware that we were unable to deliver face to face events due to Covid. Thankfully, this term, we have the freedom to deliver in-person events again. To that end, our events this term, and indeed academic year, will be delivered through a combination of online and in-person venues.
The events we run as a society, aim to promote students with:
Exposure to the different surgical specialties
Learning of practical skills, that are beneficial to all specialities within Medicine, not just Surgery
Education
To kick off the year, next week we have two exciting online events. The first is “Surgical Speed Dating”, which will run on Tuesday 5th October at 7 pm. This event is all about showcasing some of the fantastic variety in surgical careers, and we have excellent presenters lined up with the goal of inspiring you.
The second event is, “An Introduction to Surgical Skills”, on Thursday 7th October at 7 pm. This event will be led by our superb Practical Skills Convenors, Rebekah Loy and Euan Ramsay. This event aims to introduce you to what surgery is, and more specifically some of the key techniques that are common to surgery. There will be the opportunity to follow along in tying surgical knots, all you need is two shoelaces and two weighted mugs.
At Ogston, we try to bridge the gap in surgical skills provision, by delivering practical skills courses. This year, we are pleased to announce the return of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh ‘Future Surgeons Key Skills’ event, which will be running in Aberdeen at the Suttie Centre on Saturday 23rd October. Availability was more limited than usual, due to ongoing Covid restrictions and sold out in an incredible 4 minutes. This is sure to be a fantastic day, so if you’d like to know more about the event, check out the links at the bottom to the RCSEd page and a review from the last time we ran this event. We are looking to run this course again next term, so remember to keep an eye on the Ogston socials.
Whether you’re able to attend the Key Skills course or not, starting in the latter half of the term, we will be delivering a regular series of practical skills workshops in Suttie. We will have separate courses for those who are complete beginners to knot tying and suturing, and other days for those who are comfortable with the basics and would like to practice slightly more advanced techniques.
Another core value of Ogston, is diversity and inclusivity. We are passionate that a career in surgery is for anyone, without any sense of stigma or elitism. To that end, we intend running a diversity and inclusivity series, with the hope of delivering several events that reflect and embody these values.
For those who were a part of Ogston last year, you will be familiar with the Teaching Series. This was a fantastic student and trainee led series covering all surgical specialties to help us prepare for the seemingly never-ending Medical School exams! As this series was so successful, we will be running a version of this again, but this time having more of a focus on student led teaching. Furthermore, we are hoping to incorporate anatomy revision sessions, which we hope will be of value to junior year students prepping for OSPE’s!
Well, that’s the plan for the Autumn term. I’ll be giving another outline for the Spring term in the new year.
For now though, have a great year everyone and we look forward to welcoming you to our events in due course :)
Oliver
