Wounds and wound healing. Foreword.

摘要

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) released its final ruling on resident supervision and duty hour restrictions to be enacted 1 July 2011. The full report can be found on their website www.acgme.org. You have noticed that the topic of this issue of the Surgical Clinics of North America is about wound healing and you may be wondering what does the ACGME report have to do with wound healing. In a word-expectations. Nearly everyone in the surgical education community within the United States has been grappling with the seemingly endless focus on work regulations for the past several years. This has been a contentious debate that has inflamed passions and been espoused by many groups with varying degrees of interest and self-interest. Many feel the science has been weak, although others argue to the contrary. Some argue that the proposed, now declared, changes are a political necessity to stave off some draconian action from without the body politic of medicine. There may be some truth to all or none of the above but, in my opinion, how true the claims are is more or less irrelevant as it misses the fundamental point: are we trying to manage expectations without regard to consequences?