Editor’s Choice: Meeting demands

Surgical training is the focus of BMJ Careers this week. The authors of three new articles argue that training to be a surgeon in the UK costs too much, takes too long, and is no longer as appealing to doctors as it was in the past.

Kathryn Oakland and Sumrit Bola look at the financial burden of surgical training (http://bit.ly/1hkBA15). They have calculated that the average cost to surgical trainees of the mandatory and additional courses they undertake is £10 240. “As medical students graduate with higher debts, a surgical career may be simply unaffordable for some candidates, regardless of their ability,” they say.

M Zeeshan Akhtar argues that surgical training in the UK takes too long (http://bit.ly/1OSxOGU). Streamlining surgical training could improve trainees’ experiences and lengthen surgical careers in the health service, Akhtar says.

Ian Eardley and colleagues consider why surgery is becoming a less popular career choice than it was in years past (http://bit.ly/1KSfsVJ). They believe that several factors are at play, including trainees’ dissatisfaction with the training they are being offered.

But they also look at an issue that is affecting recruitment across all surgical and medical specialties. That is the fact that doctors in training want to maintain a satisfactory work-life balance and are prioritising where they work over what specialty they work in.

The suggestions put forward by Eardley and colleagues for how surgical training can adapt to meet the demands of today’s trainees are worth pursuing. Other specialties may also want to consider whether they should adopt similar approaches. The desire of doctors in training to ensure that work fits with lifestyle and family commitments—and the related preference for geography over specialty—is not likely to go away any time soon.