Abstract
M R. RUSSELL’S stimulating and provocative article reveals some important weaknesses in academic surgery and surgeons. There can be no doubt that he knows his subject well. For the past sixteen years, as President of the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, he has seen aspiring young men and women enter careers in all phases of academic medicine. He has come to know the pressures and frustrations which these people feel as they prepare themselves for careers in medical education. All too often academic surgeons have given him good reason to raise the questions he has. Mr. Russell is a “professional layman” with exceptional credentials and experience. If any of us seriously believe that academic surgeons would qualify for sainthood, his testimony as a kind of “devil’s advocate” should dispel any such thoughts. Mr. Russell has sketched a page from the academic surgeon’s coloring book and colored it gray. In all honesty we must agree that his points are well taken. I believe that Mr. Russell does not, however, mean to present his article as a sweeping indictment of our profession. The color is not a solid gray. His charges merit careful examination and open discussion. We may very well benefit from a closer look at the questions he has raised, provided that we are ready to act when action is required. The modern chairman of a department of surgery is an anachronism. He is expected to possess the classical qualities of “the professor,” a man of superb technical competence and clinical ability, all-knowing and father-like. These attributes are laudable and as desirable today as they ever were. Over and above this, however, he is expected to be an educator emanating new ideas of medical education, a
Published Version
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