Professor Tony Redmond has spent three decades delivering medical care in dangerous situations around the world. Here he discusses his experiences and how best to use emergency medicine in an international crisis

It was in 1988 that my team, the South Manchester Accident Rescue Team (SMART), was asked to respond to the earthquake in Armenia. This had a profound effect on me; never before had I been exposed to so many hundreds and thousands of injured people and so many dead bodies. The terrible tragedy of this huge earthquake provoked an outpouring of sympathy and teams were mobilised from around the world. Our pre-hospital trauma team linked up with the fire brigade and formed the British response to the earthquake.

The intercollegiate Surgeons’ Portfolio has recently re-launched, providing a one-stop-shop for maintaining professional records

Just before Christmas last year (2011) the intercollegiate surgeon’s portfolio was re-launched. This represents an unprecedented level of intercollegiate collaboration which combines and consolidates the ten or more years of experience with electronic logbooks and portfolios of the four surgical colleges into one integrated electronic product.  

Colonel Timothy Hodgetts visited Cape Town as the 2011 Penman Professor of Surgery

The aims of the visit were to find out what lessons could be learned for military surgery from civilian trauma management and to share military trauma experience with the medical community in Cape Town.

This visit was hosted by Professor Del Kahn and the Department of Surgery at the University of Cape Town. The department is co-located within the Groote Schuur Hospital, which is a regional trauma centre and famous for fostering Christiaan Barnard’s pioneering cardiac transplant surgery.

New GMC proposals mean surgical trainers will need formal recognition and approval. The College's Faculty of Surgical Trainers is already anticipating these changes

Teaching and training future surgeons has always been a key element of a consultant surgeon’s job, but this role has often been implicit rather than explicit. Traditionally there has been no stipulation for any requirement of educational training or qualification in order to become a trainer.