Using Anesthesiology As a Model for Change (American Medical Graduates Shunning Anesthesiology Profession‪)‬

ANESTHESIOLOGISTS, AS MEDICAL SPECIALISTS, continue to make front page headlines in The Wall Street Journal and American Medical News. (1,2) Nothing seems to sell like bad news. Today, anesthesiology is being shunned by American medical graduates as an oversupplied specialty. Moreover, perceptions by medical students, anesthesiology residents, and medical school deans foster the conclusion that job opportunities have evaporated. In only a decade, anesthesiology has reversed its fortunes from an underrepresented specialty in the Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee (GMENAC) report of 1980 to "a specialty in trouble" featured in The Wall Street Journal. (1,3) What happened? More to the point, what are anesthesiology practitioners across the U.S. going to do to reinvent this specialty for the realities of a radically changing health care environment?