Proceedings of the North Pacific Surgical Association 95th Annual Meeting. Seattle, Washington, USA. November 14-15, 2008.

摘要

You are probably wondering why I would begin a talk on surgery residency training with a quote from Cormac McCarthy's thriller novel about drug dealing in South Texas. But it is because when I took on the job of surgery residency program director 25 years ago in 1983, the role of program director was similar to that described by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in this fascinating novel. There were no rules, no guidelines; and although you might not have had the authority of God, you did have pretty much the same authority as some minor deity. You knew what you were supposed to accomplish at the end of the day or at the end of 5 years, and it did work 90% of the time because the people were good, in fact really good. The other 10% were not bad people but you could never quite figure out how to make them into really good surgeons.