The surgical workforce crisis: rising to the challenge of caring for an aging America.

Abstract

In the past century, both the field of surgery and the population it serves have markedly changed. The number of elderly individuals in the United States is rapidly increasing. However, this increase has not been accompanied by commensurate growth in the surgical workforce. As the demographic characteristics of medical students have become more diverse, medical student interest in surgical training has declined. These trends raise two fundamental questions. (1) Will there be enough surgeons to meet the needs of an aging United States population? (2) Who will these surgeons be?