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Editorial

Managing the Cardiothoracic Surgical Workforce: A Responsibility of the Profession

Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachussetts

^_* Address correspondence to Dr Mayer, Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Children's Hospital Boston, 300 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (Email: john.mayer@cardio.chboston.org).

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

	Introduction

 
In this issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery there are two articles related to the cardiac surgical workforce in Canada. The first article [1] describes the survey results of the graduates of cardiac surgical training programs in Canada between 2002 and 2008. The second article [2] describes the results of the dynamics of modeling systems for the future Canadian cardiac surgical workforce needs under a number of different scenarios for demand and supply of cardiac surgeons. The model also addresses the ability of the existing cardiac surgical workforce to increase the total number of cases per surgeon per year, and the impact of this increased capacity per surgeon on future cardiac surgery workforce needs. As in the United States (U.S.) [3], recent graduates of Canadian training programs report significant difficulty in finding staff positions as cardiac surgeons. There are 96% of recent graduates who reported pursuing additional training beyond the minimum required 6 years of postmedical school training, which has resulted in an average length of training of 9.4 years after medical school [1]. At least 25% of the respondents reported extending their training with fellowships because of a lack of cardiac surgery jobs. Only 5 of 12 available training positions were filled in 2009, and the percentage of Canadian medical students choosing cardiac surgery declined to less than 0.25% [1]. The workforce modeling article by Vanderby and colleagues [2] indicates that according to the current level of cardiac surgery training applications, a shortage will develop by 2020 if the current average annual workload of practicing surgeons remains constant, even if coronary bypass volumes continue to decline 1% per year. Other scenarios, particularly if surgeon workloads increase in response to shortages, indicate that a job shortage would . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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