A surgical instrument (3) comprises a housing (10), an end effector carried bythehousing, and one or more connections adapted to connect the surgicalinstrument to acontroller (1) such as an electrosurgical generator (1). The housing includesa pluralityof handswitches (13A, 13B, 13C； 14A, 14B, 14C) located at different rotationalpositions around the housing. Sets (13A, 13B, 13C), (14A, 14B, 14C) of thehandswitches are connected in common so as to send the same signal to thecontroller(1) whichever one of the handswitches is activated. In this way a user of thesurgicalinstrument (3) can send signals to the controller (1) using any of thehandswitcheswithin a particular set, depending on the orientation of the surgicalinstrument.
