The Training of Surgeons in the Future.

In March 1967 the Allen O. Whipple Surgical Society met to grapple with the critical issue of how to train surgeons in this era of health care revolution. The distinguished participants discussed many aspects of a basic problem: how to perpetuate a tried and proven method for training surgeons (the Halstedian residency system) in the developing scarcity of essential substrate, the indigent patient. This slender volume, divided in three parts, summarized their deliberations.

One is interested to read in part one, several different opinions on how we can or should continue traditional residency training. The premise is that our present system of graded responsibility extending over four or more years after internship, including a senior year of near total responsibility, must be preserved at all cost. The success of traditional training cannot be disputed; as much as any single factor, it has made the United States preeminent in the world