Involvement with the community in promulgating and achieving high standards of health. Developing good international relationships with a view to fostering high surgical standards. The College's training in surgery is by way of a combination of supervised workplace experience in the full spectrum of patient management as well as academic pursuits. The College is thus independent of universities and of government in determining professional standards. Emphasis is constantly placed on the quality of training, more than the nature of the qualifying examination, notwithstanding the importance of the latter.
Training is offered in nine surgical specialties.
Further post-Fellowship training may be undertaken either locally or overseas, and the College itself organises further supervised two year programmes in certain specialties, e.g. Colon and Rectal Surgery, Vascular Surgery and Transplantation. Surgical practice requires a continuing commitment to further education, and the RACS requires reassurance that quality of practice is being maintained. This College was created 70 years ago, with the aim of providing through its Fellowship a hallmark that would guarantee surgical excellence. This is relevant to the current demands of community groups and government agencies for formalisation of the process of assessment and reassessment of competence. During the 1980s the College anticipated these attitudes and instituted a number of processes and mechanisms, and in 1991 these became formalised under the general term Recertification.