Personal Profile
Rebecca Shirley is a Consultant Plastic, Reconstructive and Hand Surgeon whose NHS practice is at the Buckinghamshire NHS Trust. She entered the Specialist Register for Plastic Surgery in 2016 and has over fifteen years of experience in the specialty. Her interests include hand surgery and general plastic surgery and her practice ranges from common hand conditions to complex reconstructive surgery.
She is the Governance Lead in her department at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and places emphasis on a high quality, safe care.
Rebecca graduated from University College London in 2002 (MB BS), where she also undertook an intercalated BSc in Anatomy, resulting in successful publication of her work in the Lancet: Novel technique for three dimensional visualisation and quantification of deformable, moving soft-tissue body parts. The Lancet. 356 127-131 July 2000 PMID 10963249. After graduating she completed her basic surgery training on the Hammersmith Rotation and during this time undertook USMLE exams (MD). She became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons on England in 2005 (MRCS) and a fellow (FRCS Plast) in 2012.
Her Plastic surgery training began at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford and included a placement at the Burns Centre. She subsequently trained in plastic surgery at St Georges Hospital in London and Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead before working as a teaching Fellow at The Blizzard Institute, Queen Mary University of London; during this time she also worked at The Royal London Hospital and St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Her higher Plastic surgery training took place at Nottingham University Hospitals, Derby and Leicester Royal Infirmary.
Having completed her training she gained a wealth of fellowship experience in microsurgery at The Royal Marden Hospital in London, hand surgery at Oxford University Hospitals and limb reconstruction at The Bone Infection Unit at The Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford. She also undertook international fellowships at Ganga Hospital in South India and Tampere Hospital in Finland.
She had made a number of clinical visits to The Galveston Burns Unit in Texas, Shriner’s Hospitals in Florida and Philadelphia, The Swiss paraplegic Centre in Nottvil, the Burns Centre in Vienna and Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taipei.
She also accompanied the Working Hands charity to Lalgadh Leprosy hospital in 2018. She has used this varied experience to gain her expertise having observed many different approaches from around the world.
During her time at Stoke Mandeville she has been instrumental in setting up a complex wound MDT which has improved the coordination of care and involved different specialists working together to deliver excellent care. She has been the recipient of a care award nominated by a patient and two Best Trainer awards. She takes an active interest in teaching and training and is undertaking a post graduate certificate in medical education. She has sat on the selection panel for national recruitment for plastic surgery and coaches multiple trainees through the process. She is also a recognised appraiser and has been able to coach and support trainees as she has regular coaching herself.
She runs a microsurgery course three times a year with her colleague James Chan, delegates come from around the country and occasionally further a field: Ethiopia’s first female plastic surgeon came to Stoke Mandeville as a travelling fellow and extended her stay in order to be a delegate, this has lead Rebecca to become involved in a project to take microsurgery to Ethiopia. She also presents the “Stoke Mandeville Webinars”, an educational platform exploring the cutting edge of plastic surgery with a world-wide audience.
Rebecca is an advocate of joint consultant operating for complex surgery and has found this has enhanced patient care.
She regularly speaks at national and international meetings, most recently on the subject of microsurgery. She is also involved organising events at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and the National Spinal Injuries Centre.
