Profile of the rural surgeon

Abstract

The picture of a rural surgeon working in a community remote from specialty care may seem appealing to some yet discomforting to others who prefer to practice surgery in an urban setting. The rural surgeon would have to have a unique personality based on independence, creativity, confidence, and fulfillment through patient interaction. The attraction toward general and its subset, rural surgery, diminishes as our health care system focuses on increasing specialization in response to the incredible expansion of our knowledge base, the high expectations of patients that live longer, and our litigious society. As a surgeon in a tertiary referral hospital, I have come to respect the rural surgeon by firsthand observation of their patients. It is apparent they are a unique subset of the surgical community. The 1999 report by Ritchie and colleagues at the American Board of Surgery observed that 25% of a rural surgeon’s practice involved some form of flexible endoscopy [1]. The Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) was founded on flexible endoscopy as one can note by the circumferential colonoscope on the SAGES emblem. In 2001, SAGES decided to profile the rural surgeon to determine how we could assist these surgeons in their community practice. The Ritchie report