Military surgery

[bobbyseal]

From a lot of posts on this forum, people are making out like surgeons' skills are dying out in the military because of a lack of cases seen.

At the same token, all that I've heard is that the military has a huge need for general sugeons and all subspecialties.

If there's a lack of cases to go around, why is there such a need for surgeons?

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[militarymd]

Very simple. The mission is to prepare for war, and in war, you need surgeons. Unfortunately, between wars, there's not much to do.

Surgeon billets are based on potential operational committments, not how many Whipples there are to do.

 

[bobbyseal]

Good point.

I guess I tend to forget at times the primary goals of the military!

 

[Andrew_Doan]

Originally posted by bobbyseal
From a lot of posts on this forum, people are making out like surgeons' skills are dying out in the military because of a lack of cases seen.

At the same token, all that I've heard is that the military has a huge need for general sugeons and all subspecialties.

If there's a lack of cases to go around, why is there such a need for surgeons?

I can't speak about the g. surg volume, but the ophthalmology surgical volume is good, i.e. cataracts, glaucoma, strabismus, retina, cornea, refractive surgery of course, and oculoplastics.

 

[mitchconnie]

military md is exactly right about the staffing for surgery. In the Air Force, the smallest deployable medical unit consists of a general surgeon, an orthopedist, an anesthesiologist, and an ER doc. So basically every little desert runway automatically gets those personnel--requiring a large number of surgery-trained people.

Unfortunately, there is nothing for those surgeons to do either in the deployed locations or at a home base. At my last station, we were supposed to have 10 general surgeons to cover all of our mobility slots. We only had eight guys, so we were technically understaffed. But we only had enough cases for 1 or 2 surgeons to be busy, so everyone sat around and let their skills rot.

It's different for optho and some rarely-deployed specialties where the staffing is more geared to the actual workload than to possible war-time contigencies.

 

[militarymd]

bump