Case Load?

[pathognomonic]

I am seeing several folks of the surgical persuasion saying that they had inadequate case load to maintain clinical skills. Was this during residency also, or do military general surgery residencies provide adequate case load? Is this the case for other more "technical" specialties too? Case load for miltary rads, ortho or gas residencies? The reason I'm asking is that the only two military doctors that I've spoken to indepth have been satisfied with their caseloads both during residency and afterwards, but they are peds and ob/gyn.

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[former military]

I did a surgical subspecialty residency in the military for 6 years and practiced as a subspecialist for 5 years before getting out. I did an adequate number of cases as a resident and a staff I was very busy as my three man shop became a two man and sometimes a one man shop. One problem is access and age group. If you want to do a lot of hips and knees and your hospital won't see anybody over 65 you are screwed. If you want to do big cases and you have no icu or cardiologist you are screwed. I practiced at a bigger AF hospital but especially gen surgery guys can get to bases where an appy and a hernia are the biggest excitement ever... many gen surgeons complained that they didn't mind being deployed to the trauma center theaters but often they were in tent camps where no trauma came and they did nothing except drain blisters and see malingerers during their stay. For every one surgeon with an outstanding trauma rotation there were a couple others complaining about the desert doldrums.