General surgery specialism in Turkey: work power currently, continuity at quality and quantity

As one of the oldest and main branches of medicine, process of General Surgery speciality training is long, expensive and difficult. Along with the principle of using limited sources wisely, there is a need for national forward planning in order to keep the number of General Surgery specialists in the proper level and in the proper quality. This study is made for the assurement of training quality specialists and for the sustainability in the best conditions after determining of the number of general surgeons, work force, and working conditions. The number of General Surgery specialists (professors, associate professors, specialists or General Surgery subspecialists) and assistants who actively work in our country from the end of 2017 in the public sector, private sector, and university hospitals, is examined. These numbers were subjected to cross evaluation according to the provinces, academic titles and number of assistants. The estimated ratio of the existing number of General Surgery specialists to upcoming five and ten years were calculated according to the data of Turkish Statistical Institute. From the end of 2017, 3957 General Surgery specialists are actively working in 1031 of 1499 health facilities. Four hundred and forty of them are titled as professors, 324 of them are titled as associate professors. For every 25 thousand people, there exist 1.22 surgeons. Ten years ago, this ratio was calculated as 1.27. The number of assistans, which was 1005 ten years ago, is decreased to 768 today, but the increase of the number of specialists is 409. The number of General Surgeons in our country is above the ideal ratio, which is one for 25 thousand people. In case rate of increase of the number of General Surgeons for the last 10 years continues, when the decrease of population growth rate is considered, there will be an uncontrolled increase in the number of surgeon per 25 thousand people. Just as the distribution of General Surgery specialists -whether or not having an academic title- is not balanced, the number of instructor per assistant is also excessive.