Welcome to Episode 12!
In this week’s “Coffee with consultants” feature, we’re going off-brand a bit and interviewing a registrar in our featured specialty. Nonetheless, this week’s episode features a specialty that so many of you have requested that I simply could not wait! And so, I’m very pleased to introduce this week’s episode, which is all about the path to specialising in paediatric surgery.
Dr Jason Mcmaster is currently a registrar in paediatric surgery at the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital in South Africa. After completing internship and community service, Dr Mcmaster held a medical officer post in the paediatric burns unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, where he discovered his calling and passion. It was a great privilege to interview Dr McMaster for this podcast, and I’m sure you’ll find the interview extremely interesting.
Whether you’ve had any exposure to paediatric surgery or not, it should please you to know that the training available in South Africa in paediatric surgery is excellent and compares favourably with high-income countries, who often send their surgeons to South Africa to further their skills. Listening to Dr Mcmaster, it was encouraging and motivating to learn just how highly esteemed the South African clinical setting is. We would do well to appreciate the opportunities we get as junior doctors and medical students, even amongst the challenges.
Links to articles and the podcast mentioned in this episode:

"Don't trust your thoughts after midnight" - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953619307695
Europe surgeons vs SA logbooks - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34407553/
Discover paediatric surgery podcast http://www.discoverpaediatricsurgery.com/

Thank you to our sponsors for this episode!
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If you know of a consultant or senior registrar in a specialty that YOU would like featured on the Dr Coffee Podcast, please get in touch. The podcast’s email address is drcoffeeza@gmail.com.