Spinal Surgery

Spinal Surgery

Details of the Fellowships

From 2023 the fellowships will be open solely to applicants that will be post-certification or appear on the GMC and/or Irish Specialist Registers at the start date of the post. These posts are suited to those applicants within two years of the completion of surgical specialty training. 

We are recruiting fellows for posts starting on the 7th of August 2024 for a period of 12 months in training centres throughout the UK.  The 12 month posts offer a year of intensive training and are suitable for candidates who have trained in Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgery and Neurosurgery, who have a demonstrable interest in Spinal Surgery. 

Training Locations Available

The training centres that are approved to deliver the advanced training are:

• Manchester - Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust
• Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
• Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Bristol - North Bristol NHS Trust and University Hospital Bristol and Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust
• Birmingham - Royal Orthopaedic Hospital 
• Cardiff - University Hospital of Wales and University Hospital Llandough and Noah's Ark Children's Hospital for Wales
• Sheffield - Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Sheffield Children's Hospitals
• Stoke - University Hospital of North Midlands 
• Liverpool - Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust 
• Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

The application process for new centres is currently open so there is a possibility that new centres may be added to the list.  Although approved for training not all centres listed above will be available or will be accepting a fellow for 2024.  A confirmed list of locations will be published to candidates shortly before the interview date. Further details of the fellowships, the units and the training available can be viewed on the JCST website.

Recruitment

Applications open on the 16th October 2023 and should be submitted via the on-line portal (Oriel) until the 1st December 2023.  To access Oriel click the 'Apply Now' button at the top of this page. 

The interviews will be virtual and will be held from the 15th January 2023 (tbc).

For full details of the the selection process please view the

• Person specification
• Applicant guide
• Key dates

The Selection Process

The selection process will be made of two components

Curriculum Vitae and Logbook  

As part of the selection process we are asking candidates to provide a validated logbook demonstrating experience relevant to the sub-specialty and a structured CV.  The CV should be no longer than 4 pages in length, text a minimum of 12 point font, and include the information listed below.  

Candidates will be asked to email both documents to england.sevrecruitment.sw@hee.nhs.uk by no later than 10:00am on the 8th of January 2024.   

List of contents
Additional Qualifications	Please list additional qualifications other than FRCS or equivalent, including year of attainment and institution. Give a short summary of the work involved and outcome. Please state if a qualification is in progress or completed.
Prizes	Please listup to 5 prizes you have, when they were awarded and for what reason. Research grant awards can be included.
Courses /conferences	Please list a short summary of relevant specialty specific training course or conferences you have attended in the last 3 years.
Audit	Please list a summary (maximum of 6) of audit experience, highlighting relevance ofthe audits, your participation in the audit, where the audit was presented including examples of closing the loop audits.
Publications	Please list a short summary and reference of your publications, highlighting relevant specialty papers and your involvement in the publication. Book chapters can be included.
Presentations	Please list a short summary of your poster/oral platform presentations,highlighting relevant presentations only.
Teaching Experience	Please summarise your teaching experience, listing your involvement ie organisation of teaching programs, delivery of teaching, faculty teaching experience, participation in an educational committee, qualification in teaching (not included in additional qualification section).  Briefly summarise any feedback for each role
Management &  Leadership	Please list any managerial roles/leadership training including designing and leading any healthcare improvement project (within the last 3 years). Include any formal qualification in management or active participation in NHS committee work
Achievements outside medicine	List your achievements outside medicine
Motivation	Why you are applying for this fellowship programme, and what you hope to gain from it? highlight any previous exposure to interspecialty working
Commitment to specialty	Describe how you have demonstrated to date your commitment to interdisciplinary working and how this has influenced your application for TIG Fellowship

Virtual Interview

The interview will consist of two individual interview panels and both interviews will be approximately 15 minutes in length. The interview panel will be made of a combination of specialty representatives. Below is the outline of the interview and more specific information will be given to candidates when invited to interview.

Panel 1 (15 minutes - 7.5 mins per competence) 

• Research
• Clinical Scenario 

Panel 2 (15 minutes - 7.5 mins per competence) 

• Leadership/Management 
• Audit/service improvement 

Below is an example of the scoring frameworks that will be used within the interview.

Panel 1

Clinical Scenario - Scoring Descriptors

Criterion	Poor (1 Point)	Areas for Concern (2 Points)	Satisfactory (3 Points)	Good (4 Points)	Excellent (5 Points)
Recognition of the issues	Fails to recognise the issues.	Recognises some of the issues but confused about others	Recognises most of the issues-Needs prompting	Reasonable grasp of the situation - Minimal prompting	Clearly identifies all relevant issues without prompting
Judgement	Doesn’t know which issues can be addressed	Some attempt to prioritise but in a confused and illogical order	Has some idea but needs some prompting to address all the issues	Good grasp of the situation and reasonable attempt to prioritise	Clear and effective discussion of issues and how to deal with them.
Planning and use of resources	No attempt at planning or at using resources	Poor attempt at planning, uses resources ineffectively	Some planning but does not deal with all issues without prompting	Good attempt at planning and reasonable use of resources	Effective plan using all resources appropriately with no prompting
Communication strategy	No communication, attempts to work alone	Poor and ineffective communication	Partial communication but misses out some key personnel or issues- Needs prompting	Good communication with most of the relevant individuals	Communicates thoroughly with all relevant individuals with no prompting

Research - Scoring Descriptors 

Scoring examples to be agreed within pre-interview meeting

Panel 2

Leadership and management – Scoring Descriptors

 

Audit – Scoring Descriptors

Domain	Poor (1 Point)	Area of concern (2 Points)	Satisfactory (3 Points)	Good (4 Points)	Excellent (5 Points)
Clinical issues and standards	No knowledge of governance process	Poor understanding of what audit and governance entails	Able to describe basics of audit and governance and the processes involved	Good description of audit and governance. Minimal prompting	Clearly identifies all relevant definitions and processes without prompting
Planning, methods and resources	Cannot describe how to plan or find resources. No understanding of how to collect data	Some attempt to plan but in a confused and illogical order. Not clear about data collection	Reasonable plan and  use of resources but needed some prompting. Some deficits in data collection.	Able to describe most aspects of a good plan and how to collect data. Resources used satisfactorily.	Clear and effective planning and data collection. Good use of resources. No prompting
Biases and design difficulties	Does not understand the principle of bias in general or in the scenario. Cannot suggest a design or describe any difficulties.	Incomplete understanding of the bias and difficulties of their design.	Recognises the bias of their plan and the difficulties of their design but has no plan to address these	Recognises the bias and difficulties with their plan and makes some suggestions for improvement with prompting	Clear understanding of biases and difficulties in the plan and has clear ideas to improve original plan without prompting
Communication and dissemination of results	Fails to suggest any ideas as to how to disseminate results	Has some ideas but does not identify the key people who need to be informed of the outcome	Recognises some of the key people to be informed but does not inform sensitively. Some idea of the audit cycle	Identifies most of the key people to be informed and has some idea that sensitivities may be involved.  Understands audit cycle	Identifies all the key people to be informed and suggests how to do so recognising any sensitivities. Clear idea of the audit cycle.