Our activities at the COSECSA conference in Zimbabwe

HG Neonatal Skills Course 

Faculty: Kokila Lakhoo, Merrill McHoney, Gerlin Naidoo, Noel Peter, Dennis Mazingi

The entire faculty with local help worked the day before to prepared sheep tissue obtained by the skills laboratory technician to create low fidelity simulation models for above course. This is a skilled based course in neonatal surgery with addition of models for adult surgeons doing children’s surgery (gastrostomy, cannulation in children and chest drain insertion. Due to oversubscription we ran the course on 30 November and repeated it on 1 December. The participants ranged from core trainees to adult general and paediatric surgical trainees. The models covered bowel anastomosis, gastrostomies, duodenal atresia, and repair of tracheo -oesophageal fistula and oesophageal atresia, cannulation, chest drain insertion and pyeloplasty. We did a pre and post-test which showed an average of 83% improvement and the feedback was again very positive with a request for video clips of each station. We also ran a training the trainer session parallel to the course to create a local faculty. The participants have requested a gastroschisis station for next year.

Research Seminar 

Faculty: Dennis Mazingi, Soham Bandyopadhyay, Noel Peter, Gerlin Naidoo

The research seminar was conducted until 3pm with a basic and advance section. We had 40 participants with a mixed group of trainees needing basic research skills and an advance group of early years consultants requiring an advanced programme. The ask was basic and advanced research skills. The seminar mainly concentrated on systematic reviews and grant applications. Six breakout rooms were created to design a project as learning experience. The feedback was very positive. The participants were encouraged to join the online research programme run by the Oxford University Global Surgery Group (OUGSG) research team. The take home message was that research is not confined to university staff but should be brought into the clinical arena as clinical researchers are important and relevant to improve health care. There is now ongoing support for research via OUGSG. 

POCUS Course 

Faculty: Dennis Mazingi, Soham Bandyopadhyay, Gerlin Naidoo

This point of care ultrasound (POCUS) course took place from 3pm onwards. The equipment was loaned from the department of radiology in Zimbabwe and the actors for the demonstration were three medical students.

The course was well received as it was purely aimed at paediatric surgical and children’s emergency staff to decrease the need for waiting for imaging in an acute setting. The course ran until 8pm and the feedback was to extend the time and open to all paediatric staff.

Fellowship Exams 

Oxford Faculty: Ashok Handa, Noel Peter, Merrill McHoney, Kokila Lakhoo

Professor Handa was an online examiner for the adult general surgery membership exams. While, Mr Peter was the examiner for the orthopaedic examinations, Professor Lakhoo was the external examiner for the Paediatric Surgery Fellowship Exams and Dr McHoney was an examiner for the fellowship exams in Paediatric Surgery.

Paediatric Surgery Fellowship Exams

There were 22 candidates and 24 examiners, seven observers, one internal and one external examiner. All the examiners were from Africa bar six who came from USA, UK, Europe, and Canada to have international representation for standard setting for the COSECSA examinations. We had 12 stations with two scenarios each covering 24 topics. The clinical and viva stations were appropriate for fellowship exit exams. Examiners were paired as new and experienced per station. There were three floating examiners who covered conflict when the examiner’s trainee was being examined. There were 20 passes and three failures. The quality of the examination is of high standing and continues to improve, keeping up with international standards. Next year, the examinations will have an OSCE style with actors representing patients.

This trip was jointly funded by Oxford Locum Fund and KIDSOR.