Editorial policy
Transparent sourcing.
Conservative claims.
Our policy keeps programme discovery useful without turning incomplete public information into certainty.
Source hierarchy
Dedicated programme pages, hospitals, universities, regulators and professional societies take priority over third-party summaries.
Application status
“Open” requires a current official signal. Passed deadlines are closed, and an existing programme page alone never proves an active intake.
Unknown fields
Eligibility, funding, licensing and hands-on participation remain visibly unconfirmed when the official source does not state them.
Corrections and independence
Evidence-led corrections are reviewed before publication. Listings are not endorsements, rankings, accreditation decisions or paid recommendations.
What is listed
Only cardiothoracic subspecialty training: post-residency clinical fellowships, research fellowships in a cardiothoracic subspecialty, and observerships whose official page states a subspecialty focus. Core residency, national specialist qualifications, degrees, courses, workshops, grants with no host programme, and anaesthesia-, cardiology- or ICU-led programmes are not listed.
Evidence for eligibility
A programme is published only when its official page states who may apply, and we check that wording against the live page before publishing. Where a programme accepts both finished surgeons and trainees, we say so rather than choosing one.
How status labels are used
Open, Rolling, Upcoming, Closed, Date not announced and Needs confirmation follow the dates and wording on the official source. A programme with no published date is shown as Date not announced, not as open. Conflicting dates are labelled as such.
Conflicts of interest
Programmes cannot influence their listing or its position, and the directory does not rank programmes. If any sponsored placement is ever introduced, it will be disclosed clearly and kept separate from editorial listings.
Withdrawing an entry
A host may ask for an entry to be corrected or removed. We act on a request that comes with an official source, or from a verifiable institutional contact, after checking it against the live page.
Read the full workflow.
See how discovery, verification and maintenance work in practice.
View methodology →