The first symposium for ORP in Karachi, Pakistan was conducted on 18–19 June 2011 in local hotel. There were 20 participants from various parts of the country, one surgeon observer, five surgeon faculty and three ORP faculty. The local organization was done by ORP faculty Munawar Fazal who is our international ORP faculty. The observer surgeon faculty was sent by the future host of ORP course to be held in Bahawalpur to gain first-hand experience of the event organization.
Dr Zaki Idrees one of the senior AO faculty briefed the participants about the objectives of the event and the philosophy behind it. On the first day the main topics of bone healing, absolute stability and introduction to instruments were discussed. The standard videos for AO principles course were used and the procedures were first demonstrated by the faculty, then some of the participants had the opportunity to practice the skills on the saw bones.
Day two consisted of lectures on femoral fractures, patient safety, patient positioning and radiation safety in OR. The practicals on external fixator and IM nailing were demonstrated.
The participants were very keen, interactive and showed lot of interest. The course was conducted in two languages English and Urdu. It appears that there was no significant difficulty in communication.
However, we feel that we need to organize the bone models and instruments for future courses. For this event the bone models used were left over from our previous AO trauma courses. This adds significant limitation. Moreover, the participants wish to perform the procedure themselves for better understanding. We also involved some new surgeon faculty who are also very enthusiastic, adding to our pool of national faculty. However, our ORP faculty is developing. We have three faculty for this course. We identified 3–4 good participants who can be trained and groomed to become future faculty. It will be a very good long term plan if we could arrange ORP training or these people in the region. We plan to submit this proposal to director ORP Susanne Bäuerle.
Overall the course met the stated objective. We were able to identify candidates for future faculty development and further identified the areas of improvement. We are grateful to Prof Shah, Susanne Bäuerle and their respective teams as well as Synthes staff for their sterling support.
After the new guidelines from AO SEC, we have made a strategic change in the direction of AO SEC events in Pakistan. Our main emphasis is now on ORP training as AO trauma courses are well-established in the country (we are conducting AO Advances course this year). This has allowed to free up the resourses for ORP and minimized overlap with AO trauma courses.
We look forward to continued AO SEC support for ORP faculty development in the country.
Report by Prof M A Wajid, Member Board of Trustees.