The highlights in the First English Contest of Gastrointestinal Surgery Case (Guangzhou station)
Accompanying with the rainy day and the great passion of all the participants, the First English Contest of Gastrointestinal Surgery Case (ECGSC) was unveiled grandly in the stylish W hotel on May 9th in Guangzhou.
Following the great success of the Asian Selective Trials on Cases Debates of European Society of Thoracic Surgeons (ESTS) held by AME publishing company, the ECGSC began with a special appetizer—various experience shared by renowned experts (Figures 1-8). Topics ranged from surgical technique, like Prof. Zhu’s view on laparoscopic digestive tract reconstruction after the gastric surgery (Figure 3), to skills of publishing academic paper, like Grace S. Li, the AME Senior Editor’s suggestion on how to write an excellent SCI paper (Figure 7). Moreover, Prof. Alan Sihoe, the chief examiner of the Asian Selective Trials on Cases Debates of ESTS, also passionately presented to all his personal unique opinion on skills of submitting paper to and giving lecture in the international medical conferences, including the choice of conference, writing an abstract, making delicate PowerPoint presentation, notes on international meeting lectures and so on (Figure 5). Treated with such “delicious appetizer”, how could the audience not listen and make record with full attention?
With higher passion after the appetizer, now our audience were finally showed to the highly anticipated main course—the first ECGSC!
Review experts of this contest included Prof. Zhiwei Zhou, Prof. Yanfu Lu and Prof. Zhongchen Liu together with some editors of A Notebook on Laparoscopic Gastrointestinal Surgery constituted the mentor group (Figures 9,10).
Contestants (Figure 11) were planned to include Dr. Tingyu Mou from Nanfang Hospital, Dr. Deqing Wu from Guangdong General Hospital, Dr. Shuqiang Yuan from Sun Yat-sen University, Cancer Center and Dr. Zirui He from Ruijin Hospital. However, being delayed by the heavy rain, Dr. He would participate in another contest in other stations.
The contest was comprised by two sections—Q&A between the speaker and the other contestants and Q&A between the speaker and the contest host. Contestants drew lots to decide their start order.
Section 1: one contestant posed questions as the speaker in English within 2-3 minutes. Then the rest of the constants had 3 minutes to discuss the answer with their mentors. During the discussion, audience would also choose their own answer with a voting instrument. Three minutes later, other two contestants wrote down their answers on the white board and explained their choice in English within 2 minutes. Then the speaker gave out the suggested answer and explained it. Audience’s choice would also be presented. At the end of section one, the review panel and mentors gave their professional comments on the medical cases and performance of each contestant.
Section 2: contestants consecutively went to the stage to answer questions posed by the review panel and mentors, after which audience and review panel graded the contestant (score proportion: 70% from review experts, 30% from audience). In the end, contestant with the highest score would be the winner and would be awarded a certificate. A total of four winners will be selected from the contests in four different stations to enter the finals and the final winner will have a chance to give a speech in the 15th World Endoscopic Surgery Conference.
During these two sections, no matter in medical case analysis or questions from the host, every contestant answered in fluent English. The humor, calmness and composure they showed at the stage reminded us of the great charm in the international conference (Figures 12-15).
After the review panel and audience scoring, with his great advantage in audience interaction and logical thinking, Dr. Shuqiang Yuan (Figure 16) finally won the First GSCEC (Guangzhou station)!
Winning or losing, participation is what really matters. We gave our thanks to every contestant for their outstanding performance.
After such an exciting main course of today’s agenda, let’s bring the dessert—the signing and presentation ceremony for A Notebook on Laparoscopic Gastrointestinal Surgery (Figure 17). In this sweet moment, audience could not only take the book home for free, but, more importantly, also have the signature of editors of the book! No wonder the whole room was all in one second boiling with excited fans.
Finally, the First GSCEC (Guangzhou station) ended successfully with the group photo of the “Iron Warriors” (editors of A Notebook on Laparoscopic Gastrointestinal Surgery) (Figure 18).
Acknowledgements
None.
Footnote
Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
