BOFAS Principles Courses:

These courses are aimed at UK Higher Surgical Trainees in Trauma and Orthopaedics / ST3 onwards and are designed to teach the core of Foot and Ankle surgery in an informal and interactive environment. 

The emphasis is on clinical examination cases, discussion groups and typical day-to-day clinic scenarios. Although not an exam preparation course, content is taught to the standard expected in the FRCS(Tr & Orth) exam; that of a day-one non-specialist orthopaedic consultant. 

Typically the courses cover topics including:

• Clinical examination of the foot and ankle
• Forefoot disorders including rheumatoid arthrits
• Acquired flatfoot
• Hindfoot and ankle osteoarthritis
• Neuromuscular disorders
• Ankle arthroscopy & instability
• Heel pain and tendoachilles disorders
• Diabetic foot and Charcot arthropathy
• Orthotics
• Lisfranc fractures
• Ankle fractures
• Pilon and hindfoot injuries

Prior to the course, delegates will be asked to book a day of private study leave and to view 8 hours of on-line lectures and complete a Learning Log. On the course, there will be a series of short lectures to consolidate knowledge as well as patient clinical examination sessions, case-based discussions and group vivas. Delegates are broken up into groups depending on training year so that sessions can be tailored to stage. 

Dates:

The BOFAS principles course usually runs two times per year and has restarted as of July 2021.

If possible, volunteer patients will be invited to the course for clinical examination practice and/or there will be simulated cases on a variety of pathologies covering the syllabus. 

Costs:

2 day course costs £350

Cancellation

Cancellation up to 8 weeks before the first day of the course forfeits 10% of course fee paid.  

Cancellation 8 weeks or less pior to the first day of the course 100% of course fee. (subject to discretion by BOFAS council)

Failure to attend the course forfeits 100% of course fee.

Upcoming courses:

Details of upcoming courses can be found below. All courses will be advertised on BOFAS Twitter account.

Course registration will open a few months before the course date - please watch the latest news and events for details. 

Go to the Education tab and then choose Course Registration.

Please email enquiries to: events@bofas.org.uk telephone: +447443 305216

To register for courses (once available) please visit this page. 

Feedback:

At BOFAS we take delegate feedback very seriously and use it to constantly refine and improve the course.

Examples of feedback from recent courses:

• Excellent course! Very organised, excellent teaching, great opportunity to practice examination and history taking with real patients and real signs. Plenty of opportunity to ask questions. One of the best courses I’ve been on. The course dinner was also a particular highlight. (2026)
• Excellent course. Great opportunity for feedback and asking questions. Would be useful to have a written summary of 3-4 key take home messages for each topic / references for key papers mentioned. (2026)
• I would still say it’s one of the best courses I’ve been on - I’ve told a lot of my colleagues about it in the past, and will continue to do so! Big thanks to all of you again. I’m sure I’ll see you at more BOFAS events in the future. (2019)
• Great course, thank you, will be recommending to colleagues. (Newcastle, 2016)
• A chance to learn from many experts (consultants). Learning on real patients with a real problems. Course content and great organisation. (Newcastle 2016)
• I am an ST5 trainee, I have been on many many courses and this is by some margin the best course I have ever been on, partly because I find Foot and Ankle complicated and difficult to grasp and this has been an intensive opportunity to work hard on my understanding. The opportunity to do so many supervised examinations of patients and have to convincingly demonstrate their pathology is invaluable to me. I particularly enjoyed the way that the patients were grouped together into disease types so that you had the chance to see the way a disease can present in subtly different ways e.g. hallux valgus. I had a number of epiphany moments were I suddenly understood things that had eluded me for some time. I also feel my examination skills got quite a bit better, although still room for improvement. I commend you to encourage you colleagues in other speciality societies to think if there would be an appetite to develop a similar course for their own specialities, particularly the more complex ones such as paeds, hands or spines. (Newcastle, 2016)