41 Maximising endoscopy training during the COVID-19 recovery phase at St Marks Hospital

AimsOur unit has 24 gastroenterology and surgical registrars training in endoscopy. Access to endoscopy at St Mark’s Hospital has historically been a challenge due to the number of trainees requiring training lists with the demand on the unit to perform tertiary centre complex cases.The COVID-19 pandemic has further impacted the situation. Trainees have been struggling to meet targets (procedure numbers and exposure to therapy) set out by Joint Advisory Group on GI Endoscopy (JAG) to become competent endoscopists.MethodsInternal teaching courses were run to increase the number of trainers.An agreement was reached that all lists would be open to trainees without reducing the number of cases. All available endoscopy lists were scrutinised to establish suitability for training. A senior endoscopy trainee acted as the named allocator contacting the other trainees to ascertain their current training needs and weekly commitments. This information was used to allocate appropriate lists to each trainee. A timetable was disseminated to all trainees and trainers every 2 weeks.The JAG endoscopy training portfolio was used to assess the number of procedures completed by trainees, and a satisfaction survey was conducted pre- and post-intervention.ResultsFollowing our intervention, 10 further trainers were made available. The number of lists attended by trainees increased by 74%(171 between September 2020 and February 2021 versus 298 between March 2021 and June 2021), gastroscopies performed by 57% (267 vs 419) and colonoscopies by 111.4% (175 vs 370).Satisfaction with access to endoscopy training rose from 50% to 100% and satisfaction with communication increased from 66.7% to 100%.ConclusionSatisfaction amongst trainees and up-skilling in endoscopy has improved significantly with our intervention.Our model was devised by trainees for trainees. This could be implemented across all trusts and future regional academies to improve access to endoscopy training.