CESR Application Guidance: Cardiothoracic Surgery

If you fail to include any of the following you will be unlikely to make a successful CESR application in Cardiothoracic Surgery.

When applying please also see the SSG, JCST ‘guidance for applicants’ and the Cardiothoracic Surgery curriculum.

Knowledge

• The intercollegiate FRCS^[1].

Skills and experience

• provide logbook and consolidation sheets set out in the eLogbook format
• demonstrate exposure to both cardiac and thoracic surgery
• provide WPBAs as evidence of competency. It is very important that your WPBAs are as meaningful as possible and therefore they should show evidence of feedback and guidance. They should include comments from your assessors and, where appropriate, demonstrate reflection by you. Block entries of ‘satisfactory’ are not acceptable

Papers and Presentations

• provide evidence of research (please refer to the Cardiothoracic Surgery SSG)

Courses

• completion of a course in training and education (eg training the trainers)
• NHS management course

Audit

• provide evidence of audit (please refer to the Cardiothoracic Surgery SSG)

Structured references

• An applicant must provide 6 references, one of which is from their current clinical director

Guidance links

• Specialist Specific Guidance
• JCST Guidance for Applicants

[1] As this is the equivalence route then it is possible that you can demonstrate this in other ways. The specialty specific guidance on the GMC’s and the JCST’s website give details. It is however, highly unlikely, that any combination of evidence other than the intercollegiate examination will show exact equivalence.