Latest News

2024 New Year Honours

The BOA congratulates the following members of the orthopaedic community who were awarded honours at the start of the year.

• Professor Neil Mortensen, Lately President, Royal College of Surgeons of England, was awarded a Knighthood for services to Surgery.

• Professor Simon Kenny, National Clinical Director for Children and Young People, NHS England and Consultant Paediatric Surgeon, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, was awarded an OBE for services to Paediatric Surgery.

• Professor Panagiotis Giannoudis, Professor of Trauma and Orthopaedics, University of Leeds and Founder of Day One Trauma Support, was awarded an MBE for services to Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery.

• Professor Antony Johansen, Consultant OrthoGeriatrician, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, was awarded an MBE for services to Older People.

Robotics in Orthopaedics

The BOA, the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh have produced a series of guidance documents to provide a practical tool kit for hospitals when setting up a new MSK robotic surgical service. A guide for patients has also been produced. They are all available to view at download at www.boa.ac.uk/robotics.

UKITE 2023

We had an excellent turnout of 812 trainees for UKITE in December 2023 from across the UK and Ireland joined by 187 candidates from Malta and South Africa. Candidates received question-level feedback on their responses to better support their learning. Congratulations to West Midlands (Oswestry/Stoke), who were the highest scoring training programme this year with an average score of 57% for the 31 trainees who took part.

UKITE would not be possible without our excellent team of editors and subspecialty leads who write and select the questions. Thank you all for your contributions. If you are interested in getting involved for this year, you can find out more information www.boa.ac.uk/ukite or email ukite@boa.ac.uk.

Committee Appointments

Following a successful round of applications, the BOA would like to congratulate all those who have been appointed onto the BOA Committees:

Orthopaedic Committee

• Jehan Zaib

• Naomi Davis

• Lucky Jeyaseelan

Research Committee

• Andrew McCaskie (Chair)

• Ines Reichert

• Yuri Kulikov

Trauma Committee

• Sue Deakin

• Sarah Johnson-Lynn

Education and Careers Committee

• Ajay Malviya (Vice-Chair)

• Usman Ahmed

• Kapil Sugand

Research Fellowships

The BOA and Orthopaedic Research UK are delighted to announce the third cycle of BOA ORUK joint Research Fellowships will be open for applications, closing April 2024. Two fellowships of up to £65k will be available for a project in any area of orthopaedics. Funding will be available for salary (maximum £60k) or as a stipend at UKRI levels. BOA Members at any trainee grade and SAS surgeons are invited to apply. To support diversity and inclusion within trauma and orthopaedics, we encourage applications from individuals that wish to undertake their research flexibly or less than full-time (minimum 0.5 FTE). More information at: www.boa.ac.uk/researchfellowships.

Clinical Impact Awards (ACCIA) 2024 Process

The 2024 Clinical Impact Awards (successor of the Clinical Excellence Awards) will open for applications from 4th March to 15th April 2024.

The full application timetable and guidance is available on the ACCIA webpages. A link to their Applicant’s quick guide for 2024 outlining what is needed for each level of the awards to assist with applications is available at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/clinical-impact-awards-2024-applicants-guide.

2024 Council and Presidential Nominations

Council Trustee and Presidential nominations open on 15th March.

You have the opportunity to bring your skills and expertise to help us grow and develop the BOA and Trauma and Orthopaedics as a whole. A more diverse BOA, and a broader range of voices, better serves our patients and best supports our colleagues and we welcome applications from across our membership.

Please be sure to submit your nominations for Council before the deadline of 15th April and for BOA President by 1st June. More information and how to apply is available after 15th March on the BOA nominations website at www.mi-nomination.com/BOA.

As a result of the resolutions passed at the 2023 AGM, all voting members are eligible to stand for election to Trustee posts on the BOA Council.

PHIN Update

PHIN will launch a new portal for consultants during March 2024 – details can be viewed on the BOA website at www.boa.ac.uk/PHIN. The changes are based on feedback PHIN received from consultants and include:

• Consultants will be able to provide information on their fee arrangements with insurers, in addition to information about fees charged to private self-pay patients for consultations and procedures.

• Consultants will be able to nominate a delegate to work with them to submit and manage data to fulfil these activities.

Volume, Length of Stay and Patient Feedback are the only consultant measures published on the public PHIN website – and only data verified by consultants will continue to be published. As currently, consultant data about Adverse Events, Never Events and PROMs will only be available privately in the PHIN portal.

The majority of consultants are providing fee information, with 84% of Orthopaedic consultants submitting their data, however, only around 50% of consultants have validated their data, that is around 1,500 consultants that risk inaccurate data – which is submitted by the hospital – appearing on the website if they do not respond to the numerous prompts made by PHIN. Presumed publication of data is scheduled for Autumn 2024.

Consultants with eight or fewer episodes of data in any publication period will not have data published; patient feedback will only be published when more than 30 responses have been received.

The updated version of Good Medical Practice (www.gmc-uk.org/good-medical-practice) came into effect on 30th January 2024. This includes advice on ‘Being open with patients about your fees and charges’ and within this there is now a section on the requirement to submit fee information to PHIN as set out in the Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order, 2014 as amended.

Death certification reforms in England and Wales

From April 2024 new death certification reforms will come into force in England and Wales. There will be an independent review of all deaths in England and Wales, without exception either independent scrutiny by a medical examiner or by investigation by a coroner.

Other changes from April 2024 include a new medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD) to reflect the introduction of medical examiners, who will scrutinise the proposed cause of death.

Further details can be found on the BOA website at: www.boa.ac.uk/death-certification-reforms.

Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit: Free Virtual Course on Developing your Research Ideas in Trials in T&O

As part of our partnership with Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit (NCTU), we are delighted to offer opportunities for BOA members and associates to undertake courses about clinical trials and systematic review free of charge.

For further course information visit www.nctu.ac.uk/our-research/otherclinical-research/current-studies/trauma-and-orthopedics.aspx.