”So have you got anything published yet?” This question greets me during each six monthly basic surgical training review, and the answer is always sadly predictable. This is my fourth such review and I look glum as I utter the inevitable “no” to this question. We are led to believe that the holy grail of published research will cease to be the golden ticket to attaining higher training positions when the Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) reforms are introduced in August 2007. One of the main benefits of these reforms will be the end of the mandatory wasting of months or even years of medical careers in order to publish something worthy enough to attain a training number; and if this is true then I, for one, will certainly be in agreement.

I remember being told as a final year medical student that “audit is the key to publication,” and diligently spent hundreds of hours auditing the most mundane things to this …