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Mentorship has long since been acknowledged as an integral part of Neurosurgical training. The authors sought to evaluate the state of mentorship in Neurosurgical training in the United Kingdom (UK). A 28-point questionnaire was sent to all neurosurgical trainees in the UK and Ireland via the British Neurosurgical Trainee's Association (BNTA), comprising 180 trainees. There were 75 responses (180 trainees on the mailing list, 42% response rate). Despite all respondents reporting it to be at least somewhat important to have a mentor, 16% felt they had no mentors. The mean number of mentors was 2.91 with 72% of respondents having more than 1 mentor. In terms of the content of mentorship relationships, 63% were comfortable discussing career related topics with their mentor to a high or very high degree but only 29% felt comfortable discussing their general wellbeing. With regards to allocated educational supervisors, 43% thought this person to be a 'low' or 'very low' source of mentorship. The three most important traits of the ideal mentor as reported by respondents were: someone chosen by them (48%), working in the same hospital (44%) and having received formal mentorship training (36%). The current perception of mentorship in Neurosurgery from the surveyed trainees is mixed. A healthy majority of trainees benefit from mentorship of some kind, whilst a significant minority feel underserved. The surveyed trainees feel mentorship is slanted more towards clinical and professional aspects of development than it is towards personal ones. Suggestions for future insight would be an evaluation of senior registrar and consultant sentiments towards mentorship, whilst exploration into more flexible models for establishing mentoring relationships may help to address the heavy importance of trainee choice which is voiced by this survey's results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Burnout is becoming an increasingly recognised phenomenon within the medical profession. This study aims to investigate the presence of burnout amongst neurosurgical trainees in the UK and Ireland as well as investigating potential exacerbating and protective factors. Method: An online survey was sent to all neurosurgical trainees in the UK and Ireland via the British Neurosurgical Trainees' Association (BNTA) mailing list. Responding participants anonymously completed the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) and answered questions about known risk factors for burnout including workplace environment, workplace bullying, time spent on leisure activities and sleep and reported likelihood of leaving neurosurgery. We also collated data on responders' demographics. We compared CBI scores for participants with and without risk factors to determine correlation with CBI. Results: There were 75 respondents (response rate 42%) from a range of ages and all training grades, 72% of whom were male. The median CBI score was 38.85 (IQR 17.76). Participants showed a higher degree of personal and workplace burnout (median CBIs of 47.02, IQR 25.00; and 49.14, IQR 19.64, respectively) compared with patient-related burnout (median CBI 18.67, IQR 25.00). Participants with the following self-reported risk factors were significantly more likely to have higher CBIs: workplace bullying (p = 0.01), getting on less well with colleagues (p < 0.05), working longer hours (p < 0.05) and insufficient sleep, exercise and leisure time (all p < 0.01). Those with higher CBI scores were more likely to consider leaving neurosurgical training (p = 0.01). Conclusion: We identified a high burnout incidence in a cohort representative of UK neurosurgical trainees, although our results may have been skewed somewhat by selection bias. We determined potential risk factors for burnout related to specific workplace stressors and time for non-work activities. In the future, changes to training curricula should address these issues, aiming to improve training, enhance patient care and reduce attrition rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study Design: Retrospective audit in a single center during a period of 7 years operated by 3 groups of surgeons after 3 different surgical techniques., Objective: Our study aimed to determine whether surgical technique had any influence on the incidence of spondylodiscitis in patients undergoing lumbar microdiscectomy and to compare this with published rate of incidence of spondylodiscitis., Summary of Background Data: The incidence of spondylodiscitis post-lumbar microdiscectomy ranges from 0.2% to 15%. There is limited evidence to compare different techniques and the incidence of spondylodiscitis., Methods: A total of 3063 patients were analyzed from 2005 to 2011 for discitis postoperatively. The first group followed a standard microdiscectomy technique, the second group used antiseptic (Savlon; Novartis Consumer Health UK Limited, Surrey, UK) irrigation at the end of the procedure to irrigate the disc space, and the third group followed standard microdiscectomy along with usage of a separate disc instruments when discectomy was performed. The number of patients operated in the individual groups was 559, 1122, and 1382., Results: The total number of patients who had postoperative discitis was 3 (0.10%), with a range of 0.07% to 0.18%. There was 1 case of discitis in each group. The incidence of spondylodiscitis in groups A, B, and C were 0.18%, 0.09%, and 0.07%, respectively., Conclusion: This study concluded that different techniques used for lumbar microdiscectomy revealed that standard microsurgical technique with usage of antiseptic irrigation for the disc space and usage of separate disc instruments had lesser incidence of spondylodiscitis in comparison with standard microdiscectomy. The overall incidence of postoperative discitis remains less in our series. So far, to our knowledge, this report involves the largest number of patients studied to determine the incidence of discitis in patients undergoing lumbar microdiscectomy., Level of Evidence: 3.