Historian's lecture: remembering Dr. Jim Gillespie as a world adventurer, master surgeon, and invaluable mentor

Abstract

Prospective surgeons need great mentors. Residents hope to train under attending surgeons who have not only knowledge and technical skill, but also the dedication and patience to help them better impart their wisdom to those they teach. From the dawn of the practice of surgery, good mentors have been vital for sage advice to their students, to give them the best foundation on which to build new skills and concepts, thus advancing the art of surgery. Whether students learned from surgical amphitheatre demonstrations of such great 19th century surgeons as John Collins Warren or Samuel Gross; from great 20th century surgeons such as Halsted or Zollinger; or from contemporary mentorship in the increasingly structured and constrained framework of a 21st-century residency, good surgical role models are critical for the future of our profession.