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Ann Thorac Surg 2006;82:1-3
© 2006 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

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Editorial

Attracting Outstanding Students (Premedical and Medical) to a Career in Cardiothoracic Surgery

^a Division of Cardiac Surgery, The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland
^b Division of Thoracic Surgery, The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland

^_* Address correspondence to Dr Gott, 618 Blalock Building, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St, Baltimore, MD 21205 (Email: vgott@csurg.jhmi.jhu.edu).

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

	Introduction

 
Over the last few years, there have been a number of articles about the problems facing our specialty, particularly with regard to attracting the best individuals into our cardiothoracic training programs. In an excellent article entitled Why Become a Cardiothoracic Surgeon [1], Nicholas Kouchoukos commences the paper with: "These are trying times for the specialty of cardiothoracic surgery." He goes on to enumerate some of the factors contributing to these difficult times: six to nine years of surgical training after medical school; difficulty in finding suitable jobs at the completion of training and then the dual factors of increased malpractice payments in combination with diminishing annual incomes. Several thoracic society presidential addresses in the last two years have also presented the foregoing problems related to attracting "the best and brightest" medical students to our specialty. The supply/demand issue in our specialty was a major topic considered in the 2003 Society of Thoracic Surgeons' presidential address by one of us (WAB) [2]. We pointed out that the current semi-crisis in the cardiothoracic job market appears to be transient and we could be facing a shortage of cardiothoracic surgeons in 10 to 12 years. This prediction is based on a 2002 Cardiothoracic Manpower Study reported by Dr Richard Shemin that indicates that one-half of the current cardiothoracic surgeons will be retired in 13 years; this corresponds to a median calendar year of 2011 [3].

More recently, Irving Kron discussed the current supply/demand issue in cardiothoracic surgery in his presidential address at the Southern Thoracic Surgical Association meeting in November 2005 [4]. In his insightful presentation, Dr Kron indicated that because of our aging baby-boomer population, the US Medicare population will double between 2000 and 2030, and this dramatic increase in our aged population will . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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