There are many reasons to get involved in Quality Improvement, not least because it is a curriculum requirement.

Within SESSA, there are QI leads in each hospital/department who you can make contact with for help. There is also a SESSA wide QI liaison group and the SQuAReS Net group of trainees who can help to facilitate projects and find someone to keep your project going as you rotate on to a different hospital.

LothianQuality is an NHS Lothian wide QI initiative with resources and information to help with your QI projects.

Finally, each year in the autumn the SQuAReS Net committee run a regional QI day where you present a poster of your work and attend some teaching structured around the curriculum QI outcomes.

There are many ways to get involved in research during your anaesthetics training, from simply getting involved in someone else's project and helping out, being a local lead for a national or regional project,leading your own study or even undertaking a higher research degree (for example, a PhD) or applying for academic training.

The SQuARes Net committee are a group of SESSA trainees with an interest in research, QI and audit and would a be good first point of contact. The team can put you in touch with researchers in your area of interest and are always looking for interested trainees to take on local leadership positions for national research projects.

There are also many research interested consultants who can be approached who often have projects on the go or ideas to be investigated.

If you are interested enough to pursue a higher degree, Edinburgh offer the "Edinburgh Clinical Academic Track" or ECAT which is an array of university positions allowing you to undertake research alongside your clinical training with some dedicated time alloted to the research. This could be anything from 20% to 100% research time and is funded in various ways, with 100% research equivalent to taking time out of programme to pursue your higher degree for a couple of years.