The training of surgeons: how many, in what, and by whom?

The Study on Surgical Services for the United States (SOSSUS), a comprehensive professional self examination, provided the data and analysis of surgical manpower and distribution requirements which are the subject of these symposium papers. The SOSSUS results come at a crucial time of change in academic surgical services, with reductions in federal and third party funding, a sharp rise in the influx of foreign medical graduates, increasing enrolments at medical schools while one in seven budgeted surgical faculty positions remain unfilled. There are no simplistic solutions to these and other problems involving surgical training, but these symposium contributions are part of the discussion necessary to a judicious reorganization of this training which should have advantageous economic, pedagogic, and social effects.