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We should all be moving towards senior-based care. That requires entrants to the specialty with a lot of experience. Such experience should be broad-based. That takes time. In short, there are no short-cuts if you want to practice A/E medicine, which as we all know stands for "Anything and Everything". While we're at it, is the FRCS(A/E) such a good idea anyway? One of the things that I like about A/E is the broad background of many of us. On my own rotation, there are physicians, surgeons and a radiologist as well as holders of the A/E exam. (The anaesthetist wandered off back to anaesthetics a couple of years ago). Of the last group, they are far from the homogenous "one size fits all" group nightmare, but I think that in the future, an abbreviated training with a narrowly focussed set of skills will not do the specialty any favours. -- Stephen Hughes FRCSEd (Not A/E)