Specialist Interest Groups

SIG Lead: Claire Kilbride

The Advancing Surgical Roles Specialist Interest Group (ASR SIG) has been developed to support practitioners who are training for, undertaking, or planning to develop their role.

SIG Lead: Belinda Reid

This Clinical Management and Leadership (SIG) group exists to meet the specific needs of experienced clinical leaders, managers and aspiring managers working in the perioperative environment. 

SIG Lead: Roy Walker

Welcome to the Human Factors Specialist Interest Group (SIG) for all healthcare professionals working in the perioperative arena.

Human Factors are a major contributor to errors in the operating theatre, communication, situational awareness, teamwork and decision-making are key in playing a significant role in patient outcomes. Providing standardised training and education, including the use of simulation further improves patient safety and efficiency of surgery.

This forum will give you as AfPP members a platform to discuss and engage with like-minded practitioners on current practice issues around the application of human factors in improving patient safety.

SIG Lead: vacant

This forum provides a platform for non-registered perioperative practitioners to share their knowledge, exchange ideas, ask advice, act as a sounding board, find information and discuss issues and concerns relating to perioperative care and their role (scope of practice).

The Orthopaedic Special Interest Group (SIG) aims to support all perioperative practitioners with their ongoing challenges within the field of Trauma and Orthopaedics.

Orthopaedics as a surgical speciality is vast. It covers planned elective procedures, planned trauma reconstruction, urgent trauma, and emergency trauma procedures. In recent years there has also been an increase in the incidence for Orthopaedic surgical teams to have Plastic surgery skills with the expansion of Major Trauma Centres across the UK.

Using the AfPP forum Orthopaedic practitioners can broaden their knowledge and expertise to support, guide, educate and share their learning and experiences enabling us all to explore the daily challenges we face in our Orthopaedic theatres. The forum can also be used to discuss current practice challenges as they arise such as location of implants, NJR, use of tourniquets and infection control challenges.

The Research and Development Specialist Interest Group (R&D SIG) is a forum to support RNs, NAs, ODPs, Non-Registered Perioperative Practitioners and wider team members to identify a research topic, develop a research or audit project as well as provide advice on sourcing research funding and getting your findings disseminated.

We will also be sharing research ideas, topics that could be explored and academic writing tips. The R&D SIG lead has a wealth of experience with numerous types of research studies and their methodology, as well as clinical audits. Healthcare professionals play a crucial role in shaping and changing existing practices through research.

Whether you are a pre-registration student, a newly qualified practitioner, a postgraduate student, a mature practitioner or an academic let’s get sharing to make sure the knowledge is out there to support colleagues in both practice and education.

Welcome to the Student and Early Careers (SEC) Specialist Interest Group (SIG) dedicated to those working towards a career in perioperative care through a college, university or an apprenticeship scheme.

This SEC Specialist Interest Group aims to support all students through their apprenticeship or degree pathway into a career in perioperative practice, offering members the opportunity to seek advice, discuss aspects of clinical practice, provide support in early careers and act as a sounding board through the student forum network.

Welcome to the new Writers’ Special Interest Group.

The SIG has been launched to support members who are interested in writing for the Journal or IPP, but don’t know where to start. We’ve also noted that many of you feel doctors often dominate the content published in the Journal, and there’s a desire to see more papers written by nurses and ODPs. To make this happen, we need more nurses and ODPs to submit a paper to the Journal.

For those of you new to writing for a publication, we would like to encourage you to consider writing a short piece for the IPP, perhaps something which focuses on a topic related to your role in practice. For those of you who have pursued academic courses at university level, whether as an undergraduate, master’s or doctorate, we strongly encourage you to consider submitting your work/dissertation to the Journal for consideration. Guidance for authors, including word limit, categories and referencing, can be found on the Journal’s submission paper at here.

Things to consider:

• Have you participated in a service improvement project, either individually or as part of a team, that you’d like to share with the wider perioperative community?
• Have you recently written an academic piece of work which received a high score that would be suitable for publication in the Journal?

As leads of the Writers’ Special Interest Group (SIG), our primary goal is to help you get published.

Please contact us on the forum, using the questions provided as prompts to kickstart your writing journey. We look forward to collaborating with you and reading your work in print.