SICOT e-Newsletter
Issue No. 53 - February 2013
SICOT News
Report on the Young Surgeons Committee Symposium held during the Dubai OWC 2012
Ahmed H. Abdel-Azeem
SICOT Young Surgeons Committee Member - Giza, Egypt
The Young Surgeons Committee (YSC) headed by Hatem Said has proven to be one of the most  successful and active committees in the SICOT organisation. Before the SICOT Orthopaedic World Conference held in Dubai, we had a discussion on how we can promote and advertise this Committee and its work as well as how we can attract other young surgeons affiliated to this great society to get involved and contribute to it. Accordingly, we asked to hold a YSC/Fellowships symposium to present our activities and work.
On the second day of the Dubai Conference, we started our symposium in the early morning. Surprisingly, the hall was full of people from all generations, young, middle-aged, and older surgeons. The day started with a welcome speech from the Chairman of the Committee, Hatem Said, talking about his four years' experience in this field and introducing the Committee to the audience starting from when and how it was born and continuing with its contributions and activities. His speech ended with the transfer of the leadership flag to Fatih Kucukdurmaz. Fatih, who is from Turkey, then took over with a spiritual speech talking about young surgeons' ambitions as well as the problems all over the world during their training periods and work afterwards. He then spoke about his future views and plans on how to promote the activities of the Committee and how to tackle the problems that young surgeons face. He was very enthusiastic in his speech.
We then moved on to the activities that the Committee takes part in. I delivered a presentation on how we worked with the senior staff in the Editorial Board of the SICOT Newsletter to promote and improve it. I then discussed the changes that we have made, starting from the poll that we conducted one year ago and how we modified the topics and the content introduced in the newsletter to meet the readers' expectations.
Afterwards, Hatem spoke again but this time as the Fellowships Coordinator. I think this was the most interesting presentation for the audience. He talked about the different fellowship programmes available now for young surgeons. He made things clear, explaining the differences between short- and long-term fellowships and why SICOT elevated the age of the applicants to 45 years instead of 40. SICOT introduced a new fellowship programme named SmS (SICOT meets SICOT). He mentioned how SICOT is now investing a huge amount of money to promote these activities and provide better training opportunities to young as well as middle-aged surgeons. This talk had the largest number of questions mostly from young surgeons concerning how they can get training opportunities and the probability of acceptance after application. He concluded that the fellowships are getting more and more competitive with a huge number of applicants, but he insisted that the persistent applicant is always the winner.
At the end, it was really interesting to hear from young surgeons, who were granted different types of SICOT fellowships, making a short presentation on their experience. Syah Bahari from Malaysia talked about his German SICOT Fellowship after being one of the best two candidates in the SICOT Diploma Examination. Also, Mohammed Babiker Abdelwahab form Sudan spoke about the AAOS/SICOT Surgical Training Fellowship and the Arthroscopy course he attended in Chicago. Then, Olaniran Orekha from Nigeria talked about his experience in Assiut, Egypt, where he is currently a fellow.
Although it was the first, it was a really successful symposium that we hope will be held regularly at SICOT meetings. One thing that I feel would add to this success is the attendance of the SICOT Board of Directors or a representative, so they can see with their own eyes how young surgeons, the SICOT future, interact.
Mohammed Babiker Abdelwahab form Sudan presenting his fellowship experience
Some members of the YSC, from left to right: Syah Bahari (Malaysia), Shalin Maheshwari (India), Stefano Rossi (Italy), Emmanuel Audenaert (Belgium), Saravanan Arumugam (Russia), Vikas Khanduja (United Kingdom), Hatem Said (Egypt), Fatih Kucukdurmaz (Turkey), Peter Yau (Hong Kong), Chun Hoi Yan (Hong Kong), Ahmed Abdel-Azeem (Egypt)