Analysis of surgical manpower for the past 20 years in Taiwan

Abstract

Background: The Taiwan Surgical Association (TSA) has been in operation for more than 50 years since its establishment. We checked the data of the members recently to have a full understandings and mastery of the human resources of TSA. Materials and Methods: All the data were collected from the basic data pool of the member maintained by the TSA. The annual membership, new memberships, deaths and withdrawals, age distribution, gender, surgical subspecialty, geographic distribution, and new major surgical specialist-issued licenses were checked. Results: The results were total membership increased lineally and doubled from 3020 to 6154; new members increased 124–197 per year, death and withdrawal were 4–53 annually; highest age range was 51–60, mean age 52.99 and median age 53; ratio of male and female increased from 0.8% to 4.4%; great majority of surgical specialist was gastroenterological surgery 29%, orthopedics 14%, urology 13%, thoracic and cardiovascular surgery 13%, and plastic surgery 11%; members were higher in metropolitan, Taipei 21.7%, New Taipei City 8.2%, Taichung 14%, and Kaohsiung 14.8%; and number of surgical-related subspecialty increased recently. Conclusions: There are still a lot of areas for the TSA members to explore. The data suggest that the government officials could provide more beneficial acts to the development of surgical society in Taiwan. For example, they might be able to guide a reasonable work shift hour limit, maximal care surgical patients' number, adequate nurse practitioners, setup legal surgical assistants in the operation room, well-training sufficient surgical residents program, and balance the number for the surgical subspecialty.

Keywords

• Manpower
• surgeon
• Taiwan surgical association