A Truly Traumatic MedSoc

On Thursday 10th November MedSoc welcomed Professor Rajan, a leading consultant surgeon at the Royal Derby Hospital and a renowned expert in the fields of Trauma and Orthopaedics, who gave us a fascinating, and often graphic, insight into his working life.

He began his talk on trauma and gave us some valuable advice on saving life and prioritising action. One of the lessons we learned was not to get distracted by minor injuries; there could be a major, hidden life-threatening injury that needs treating immediately, after which the more obvious but often less urgent minor injuries can be overcome.

Professor Rajan then went on to talk about his love of orthopaedics, and gave us an insight into medical practice in different countries, in particular in Russia. Here corrective frames are used to treat bone and joint injuries and abnormalities, unlike plaster casts and metal plates, pins and wires. To illustrate how these frames work he brought a couple of real frames assembled on model bones and we discussed many examples of how they can be used in medicine to fix broken bones, and to help treat posture as well as numerous conditions and diseases.

Professor Rajan spoke with authority in an inspiring, educating and candid way and we really enjoyed his explanations and stories of life at the cutting edge of medicine.

We we all very grateful to Professor Rajan for giving us this fantastic talk, and we look forward to the workshops on frame-building and that he has kindly offered to run for prospect medics.

Tom Coe/SMI