On the 23rd May, InterSurgeon had a working group at the 15th Meeting of the Permanent Council of the G4 Alliance. The G4 alliance works in partnership with InterSurgeon. This was a time for ideas, questions and getting the word out about InterSurgeon to The G4 Alliance member organisations. The G4 Alliance aims to act as “an advocate for the neglected surgical patient” by supporting independent NGOs in three main core issues: awareness, policy development and resource allocation. Their next steps are to quantify the impact of the G4 alliance by using 3 main deliverables to achieve this: awareness, organisation and resource mobilisation. This is where we discussed how InterSurgeon can be a useful tool.
Not only can it be used to reach over 1000 individual global members from the whole surgical team including nurses, allied health professionals and anaethesiologists, but also over 70 organisation members. It is easy to reach out to our global members using our offers and request system or by adding an organisational event. All our members are validated so there are no phishing emails or advertisements. This makes our platform a great place for initiating global collaborative partnerships for whatever purpose you require, be that research collaboration, education and skills development or even equipment sharing.
Our features in more detail:
- Offers and requests: Offers (your potential contribution to your future partner) and requests (your desired contributions from your future partner) are the key to best utilise the platform. Both offers and requests are stratified by 5 main domains: clinical assistance, education, research, training and surgical equipment. Free text boxes can then be completed to personalise each offer or request and there are even further filters to select for the specialty you require and duration. To use one example, our new Burns Care champion, Dr Cameron Gibson, made a request in February for burns care surgical equipment from either hospitals or organisations to donate to Kenyatta hospital staff who were treating injuries sustained by over 300 people during a gas truck explosion. In March, Dr Gibson made an offer of an observership. This invites members to come and learn skills at the Burn and Frostbite Center at UCHealth. Broadly speaking a request is asking for assistance and an offer is providing assistance. This is the core of the InterSurgeon site. The matching algorithm means that requests or offers that best match your own come directly to your inbox every month.
- Search function: Another functionality of the site is the ability to search for organisation or clinical members by location (using our interactive map) or using our search function which allows various filters including specialties, location or The G4 Alliance member amongst others. In this way, you can browse for potential partners that align with your own needs without using the offer or request function. As a logged in member, you can then contact the member you wish to collaborate with through their profile on the site.
- Additional benefits: Finally, we provide resources which we are always adding to and updating as our members require; including free access to the Help Lightning technology. This is a remarkable way of collaborating and mentoring globally without travelling. Using any smart device connected to the internet you can assist with operative procedures or equipment use.
- Communication with our members: We are releasing regular newsletters and updating our news page with member and organisation profile pieces and following up on successful global surgical collaborations made through InterSurgeon.
- In development: In the future, we look to provide comprehensive “how to” manuals and conduct a member survey (already piloted on our champions) to measure our own deliverables. This way we would like to show how effective a platform InterSurgeon is and will continue to be as it grows.
What are you waiting for? Sign up and start using our site today!
