Our vision and role
Led by Prof Prokar Dasgupta OBE [pictured], our Professor of Surgery, King's Health Partners Academic Surgery unites the surgical and perioperative community across King's Health Partners, through a series of events and opportunities. Our mission is to promote surgical excellence by harnessing our partnership’s collective strengths to enhance surgical research for the benefit of patients.
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The Programme aims to:
- Facilitate outstanding surgical science collaborations;
- Support hybrid surgical and implementation trials;
- Inspire students aspiring to exciting surgical careers;
- Improve education for the next generation of surgical trainees.
Areas of focus
Academic Surgery aims to drive surgical excellence across all specialties, improving education, training, access and networks for all of our students and surgeons. Here are some of our key activities:
Academic Surgical Grand Rounds
Our innovative and dynamic lecture series is designed for practising surgeons, undergraduate and postgraduate trainees aspiring to be surgeons, and allied healthcare professionals who support surgical pathways of care. We focus on the latest themes in surgery, providing a framework in which the surgical and perioperative community can come together and network, develop friendships and relationships with national and international colleagues, present high-quality research, and share advancements in their specialist fields.
Celebrating pioneering surgeons through our Grand Round Professorships
As part of our Grand Round series each month, we celebrate equity, diversity and inclusion, and honour two prominent surgeons in history:
Sir Astley Paston Cooper, a renowned anatomist and surgeon operating in the late 1700s and early 1800s, recognised for his work at Guy’s Hospital which has a Dialysis Unit named after him. He was known in particular for vascular surgery, surgery for hernia, aneurysm, otology and serving as president for the Royal College of Surgeons.
Margaret Bulkley (Dr James Barry), a famed military surgeon in the same era, operating as Dr. James Barry, who performed the first ever recorded and successful caesarean section. Bulkley-Barry was a pioneer both in their professional and personal life, as they lived as a man, but it was in fact discovered upon their death that they were female and had even given birth. We honour Bulkley-Barry as a pioneer.
We have therefore chosen to name this award as the Bulkley-Barry-Cooper Professorship. You can read more about their fascinating life in our guest article by the esteemed author, Jeremy Dronfield.
Upcoming Grand Rounds 2024
Grand Rounds are typically held virtually on the fourth Thursday of every month, from 5.30pm - 6.30pm. Please note that topics and dates are subject to change.
- ENT - Head and Neck Surgery, 25 January 2024
- Robotic Surgery, 22 February 2024
- Artificial Intelligence in Surgery, 28 March 2024
- HIV and Surgery, 25 April 2024
- Bowel dysfunction after colorectal cancer surgery, 23 May 2004
- Shared decision making in the perioperative setting; from research to practice, 27 June 2024
- Neurosurgery, 25 July 2024
- Paediatric Surgery, 26 September 2024
- Transplant Surgery and Research, 24 October 2024
Details for each Grand Round event are confirmed closer to the time on our events page. You can also join our regular invite list to receive the latest event details by contacting kingshealthpartners@kcl.ac.uk
Previous Grand Rounds can be accessed via the Learning Hub, simply add the course to your basket for free.
Surgical and Interventional Challenges
Our Surgical and Interventional Challenges are a series of study days open to all medical and surgical clinicians, interventionalists, undergraduate and postgraduate engineering and medical students, and educators. Co-programmed with the King’s College London Department of Surgical & Interventional Engineering and hosted at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering, these events aim to:
- Create an interactive environment to share clinical experiences;
- Facilitate balanced debates on current and emerging evidence;
- Provide practical hands-on experience with current devices and techniques used for managing various conditions.
Previous study days have focused on Acute Pulmonary Embolism Management, Stomas, Mesh and Reconstruction in Hernia Repair, Implants in Orthopaedic Surgery, Training in Robotic Surgery, and Gastro-Oesophageal Reflux Disease. For further information and to receive updates on future workshops, visit the King’s College London webpage.
Research excellence
King's Health Partners Academic Surgery facilitates surgical excellence by harnessing our partnership’s collective strengths. This collaborative approach has enabled our colleagues to achieve outstanding results, as evidenced by the 2021 Research Excellence Framework. By working together, we continue to push the boundaries of surgical research, improving patient outcomes and advancing the field of surgery. Below are some of our achievements and ongoing projects.
The IDEAL framework for evaluating surgical robotics
King’s Health Partners colleagues have contributed to an important milestone in the advancement of surgical robotics research through their participation in the Idea, Development, Exploration, Assessment and Long-term monitoring (IDEAL) Robotics Colloquium. The recommendations published in Nature Medicine, provide practical guidance for evaluating surgical robots, structured according to the IDEAL stages, to support the assessment of a surgical robot throughout its life cycle.
Modelling kidney transplants using ex-vivo warm machine perfusion
Researchers successfully modeled antibody-mediated transplant rejection in human kidneys, potentially enabling the investigation of new mechanisms and testing treatment strategies for transplant rejection outside of the human body. The study, published in The Lancet eBioMedicine, was authored by post-doctoral researcher and transplant trainee, Pankaj Chandak and senior authors, Professors Anthony Dorling and Nizam Mamode alongside colleagues in the School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences at King’s College London, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s Health Partners.
Surgical trials
King's Health Partners Academic Surgery has supported a number of pioneering surgical trials over the last few years. Read more below:
“There is global momentum to establish scalable Quality Improvement (QI) skills training curricula. We report development of an implementation plan for national scale-up of the 'Education in Quality Improvement' program (EQUIP) in UK urology residencies.”
Polypectomy is often the most hazardous part of colonoscopy. There is significant variability in polypectomy training and assessment internationally. DOPyS (Directly Observed Polypectomy Skills) is a validated assessment tool and is used to demonstrate polypectomy competency in the UK. This study aimed to describe the learning curve for polypectomy competency in UK trainees.
SIMULATE is the first multicentre trial investigating the effect and transferability of supplementary SBT on operating performance and patient outcomes. An evidence‐based training curriculum is presented, developed with expert and trainee input. Participants will be followed and the primary outcome, number of procedures required to proficiency, will be reported alongside key clinical secondary outcomes.
As training surgeons, our aim is to become good surgeons whilst providing the best possible care to our patients. For the first time, SIMULATE demonstrates that supplementary simulation-based training of surgical trainees results in better performance and less complications, when operating on patients. It also shows twice as many trainees become proficient in complex procedures compared to only training in the operating theatre. Our study provides the evidence-base for surgical specialties to integrate simulation in their training programmes as a means to improve surgical performance, clinical outcomes and patient safety. I’m absolutely delighted that our findings have been accepted in European Urology and I would like to thank The Urology Foundation and all our contributors for helping make this possible.
We are delighted that Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and their team of world-class surgeons have chosen to expand their surgical robotics programme with Versius. In designing Versius our goal was to provide a versatile, portable, and cost-effective surgical robotic system that could transform the field of minimal access surgery – allowing more patients to benefit than currently do. The introduction of Versius at the Trust does just that, and crucially at a time when patients, surgeons and hospitals are facing significant health and economic challenges.
Patient and public engagement
Colleagues across King's Health Partners have collaborated with the Old Operating Theatre to develop educational videos to encourage interest in surgery and medicine among young students and the general public.
In the video below, Mr Joydeep Sinha gives an insight into his role as Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
Improving the curriculum
In the video below, Mr. Chu Yiu, Consultant Surgeon, Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, Lead for Surgery, Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery Programme and Prof Prokar Dasgupta, Professor of Surgery, King’s Health Partners, discuss the improvements they have made to the undergraduate curriculum: