Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons is a professional qualification to practise as a senior surgeon in Ireland or the United Kingdom. It is bestowed on an basis by the four Royal Colleges of Surgeons, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. The initials may be used as post-nominal letters. Several Commonwealth countries have organisations that bestow similar qualifications, among them the FRCSC in Canada, FRACS in Australia and New Zealand, FCS in South Africa, FCSHK in Hong Kong and FCPS by College of Physicians & Surgeons of Mumbai in India. The intercollegiate FRCS examinations are administered by two committees, the JCIE and the JSCFE. This system replaced the earlier one in which each college administered its own examinations. First the curricula were intercollegiately coordinated by the ISCP of the JCST, and then the examinations became intercollegiate. The original fellowship was available in general surgery and in certain specialties—ophthalmic or ENT surgery, or obstetrics and gynaecology—which were not indicated in the initials. It came to be taken midway through training. Each of the four Royal Colleges of Surgeons of the UK and Ireland used to administer its own examinations. The four postnominals were FRCS, FRCS, FRCS, and FRCS. The FRCS designation without further specification then referred by convention/tradition to FRCS specifically. Today the examination and qualification are intercollegiate, although each surgeon can still choose afterward to be affiliated with one or more specific colleges. There are now a range of higher fellowships, taken at the end of higher specialist training and often in narrower fields, the first of which was FRCS in orthopaedics. Others include FRCS in urology and FRCS in maxillofacial surgery.
Membership of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons
The MRCS examinations are also now intercollegiate.
Mister or Doctor?
Holders of FRCS often choose for traditional reasons to relinquish their title of "Doctor", reverting to "Mr", "Ms", "Mrs" or "Miss". Until relatively recently - the early 19th century - the training as a surgeon was through an apprenticeship, at the end of which, if they had learnt their trade in a large city, they were examined and given a diploma; while physicians from the Middle Ages had to hold a university degree in medicine before they could practise. Today, for most, the route to Fellowship is lengthy: one must qualify as a Doctor of medicine, then undergo further postgraduate study and training through junior doctor posts before then passing assessments to obtain surgical qualifications. There are some exceptions: honour fellows, consultant podiatric surgeons and surgical care practitioners. At that point many choose to stop prefixing their name with Dr and revert to the prefix they used before qualifying FRCS can be awarded without appearing for the fellowship examination based on the recommendation of the College Council. Such surgeons are usually surgeons of high calibre who have had distinguished achievements in their career. One such category is called Conferred Fellow. A fellow selected via this category will be entitled to use post-nominal FRCS, and hence there will be no difference in terms of post-nominals between this category of FRCS and others.
