Professor Matthew Costa

Date: 19 October 2012

Location: Lecture Theatre, Medical Teaching Centre

Time: Welcome reception starting at 11:30. The lecture will start at 12:00

If you want to be a success, you can’t worry about upsetting people…

There is an old adage about Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgeons that “they are often wrong, but they are never in doubt!”

I have heard this, or equivalent quotations, on many occasions from many different groups of clinicians, academics and even patients. But, do you need to be opinionated...brash…difficult even, to be a successful clinical academic trauma and orthopaedic surgeon?

I’ll use examples from my own experience as a surgeon and an academic with an interest in clinical effectiveness studies to address this question.

If you can’t make the lecture, the summary answer is “no, but it can be helpful…”