Reaching our successors: the trend for early specialisation and the potential effect on recruitment to our speciality

摘要

The implementation of earlier postgraduate specialisation, which is currently taking place in the United Kingdom (UK), will reduce the exposure of junior surgical trainees to surgical subspecialties prior to their final career choices. The teaching of our expanding specialty is contracting and this may have a significant effect on the recruitment of our successors to the speciality of plastic surgery.Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), the restructuring initiative and vehicle for early specialisation in postgraduate medical education in the UK, was investigated after the first year due to the recruitment and organisational difficulties that occurred following its introduction. The resulting Tooke Inquiry concluded that early specialisation may be detrimental to training and suggested that medical training and education needs to be more co-ordinated and broad-based, especially in the early years. The UK government in it's response to the report have resolved to keep the current training structure for a further undefined period.