Surgeon unemployment: would practice sharing be a viable solution?

Abstract

Surgeon unemployment has become a crisis within Canadian surgery in recent years. Without dedicated governmental workforce planning, ensuring that new residency graduates can find employment will require new models of employment. Practice sharing, whereby a new graduate and a senior surgeon partner to divide their practices, allows the senior surgeon to wind down and the newer surgeon to ramp up. Importantly, this arrangement builds in formal mentoring, which is so important in the early years of starting a surgical practice. Practice sharing may be a solution for the workforce issues currently afflicting new surgical graduates across Canada.