About BOTA
The British Orthopaedic Trainees’ Association, BOTA, was set up under the direction of Mr Richard Rawlins (pictured) in 1987 following a meeting in Oxford when 45 Senior Registrars met at a symposium entitled ‘Planning a career in Orthopaedic Surgery’.
It subsequently became affiliated to the British Orthopaedic Association. Since its foundation, the membership has increased from the founding 45 to the current level of in the order of over 1000 Specialist Registrars (and recently appointed consultants).
Orthopaedic Surgeons make up around 40% of the membership of the Royal Colleges, and as the largest surgical subspecialty we devolved from ASiT, the Association of Surgeons in Training, to represent the views of Orthopaedics specifically. However, ASiT and BOTA have a very good working relationship, and work together on many issues to represent surgical trainees as a collective.
The BOTA committee are elected by members at the annual AGM and are responsible to the day-to-day running of BOTA related business. Each training region has a local regional representative that acts as a link between the committee and that area. Each national area also has elected Culture & Diversity representatives.
Currently, full membership is available to all doctors holding an National Training Number in Trauma & Orthopaedics. As of 2010, junior membership is available to all other qualified doctors in approved training programmes (ie FY, CT or non-RTT ST) and more recently medical students, through BOTA and through our partner organisation, BOMSA.