Medical Careers recently met up with Mr Chris Munsch, chairman of the Joint Committee on Surgical Training for the Royal College of Surgeons in London at their building in Lincoln's Inn Fields. We were keen to record his views on a career in surgery for our website.

With both his experience as a respected consultant cardiac surgeon and from his position as the chairman of the joint committee Mr Munsch clearly has a great deal of practical knowledge and personal enthusiasm to share with you.

We asked him to record two podcasts for the website - one for those who have already decided that they definitely want to follow a surgical career and are looking for practical insight - and another podcast with a more general message for people who have to make a decision or will be looking to make a decision at some time in the future.

We wanted to try to make the podcasts as relevant as we can for everyone so please choose the most appropriate version to yourself.

Podcast One - 'Still to decide'

Podcast length - 4 mins 15 secs

Podcast Two - 'Decided'

Podcast length - 4 mins 30 secs

Royal College of Surgeons Bulletin - extract to read

Mr Munsch was one of the four Authors, led by Alison S Carr - Senior Clinical Advisor from the Department of Health about progression into specialty surgical training from core training - and getting the balance right.

You can download a copy here.

Short Biography

Mr Chris Munsch is a consultant cardiac surgeon at the Yorkshire Heart Centre in Leeds. He has previously been Regional Training Programme Director for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Yorkshire and Cardiothoracic Surgical Skills Tutor at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, during which time he developed the Cardiac Surgical Skills Lab Project. As member and subsequently chairman of the SAC in Cardiothoracic Surgery he led the development of the curriculum for the speciality, and has been involved in the ISCP from the very beginning. He took over as chairman of the Joint Committee on Surgical Training in October 2007, and has overall responsibility for the standards and delivery of surgical training as well as oversight of the ISCP.