Registrar Training

SA Heart, in partnership with the Ashford Hospital, has participated from the outset in the Australian Government’s Expanded Settings for Specialist Medical Training Program.

This program has arisen from the “… growing recognition of the need for trainees in many medical specialties to undertake some of their training in a wider range of clinical settings in order to augment the training received in traditional teaching hospitals. The Expanded Specialist Training Program (ESTP) supports medical specialist training opportunities in a broad range of settings.” 

See http://health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/work-pr-estp for further background information.

The first cardiac registrars in this program at SA Heart were Dr Yann Chow, Dr Iman Mohasseb and Dr David diFiore.  Dr Ai Vee Ng is currently in the program.  These positions are full time, three month secondments from the public teaching hospitals where the registrars are principally employed.

The learning objectives of these rotations, through a private setting at SA Heart and Ashford Hospital, is to provide cardiology trainees at public teaching hospitals, where there is no cardiac surgery or a full scale echocardiography facility, comprehensive exposure to the pre and post care of cardiac surgical patients, all modes of echocardiography, including stress echocardiography and 3D echocardiography, in an echo lab with state of the art equipment. The program includes caring for ambulatory patients with clinical profiles not routinely seen in public hospitals, and there is the opportunity to follow patients’ treatment over an extended period, including time spent in ED, ICU, angio labs and cardiac wards.

The training curriculum, training sites and training supervisors for the ESTP are accredited by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.