Dr Eva Koo spent her clinical years at St Vincent's Hospital and decided to apply to the hospital as an intern. ``It seemed so friendly, dedicated to both the care of patients and a high level of training with a good education program,'' she says.

``I decided to go into surgery during my final year at medical school. I enjoyed surgical problems, being able to identify and treat them rather than just control them. Also, I have always liked doing things with my hands.''

Having entered the SET program at HMO3 level she began training in all areas to discover which she liked best. ``I am now in the equivalent of SET 5 and hope to do my exit year in 2010 so I have had plenty of experience through rotations,'' she says.

``I enjoy general surgery with a special interest in breast surgery. This is quite a complex area: it requires medical and psychosocial as well as surgical skills which I find very interesting.''

As an advanced trainee with St Vincent's her supervisor and mentor is Mr Jamie Keck.``He organises my whole training program to ensure I have a good overall specialty and is very approachable and helpful. ``At present I can carry out procedures which are appropriate to my level of training but usually I can only assist the surgeon. Rotations are excellent for learning different methods of operating _ every surgeon has a slightly different way and you pick up different skills all the time.''