The system problems related to thoracic surgery practices in japan; message from the Japanese association for thoracic surgery
Matsuda, H.
Kyobu Geka. Japanese Journal of Thoracic Surgery 60(5): 379-384
2007
ISSN/ISBN: 0021-5252 PMID: 17515081 Document Number: 614348
The thoracic surgery practice in Japan has characteristics such as strong burden to surgeons and young trainees for high-risk procedures under poor health care manpower system and less qualification for their high-level practices. The presence of too many numbers of certified surgeons and teaching hospitals for cardiac, general thoracic and esophageal surgeries has been well recognized providing low quality maintenance and poor training system. The Japanese Association for Thoracic Surgery has recently made a step towards to open the data of hospital quality promoting the discussion to reunify the hospitals and surgeons into reasonable numbers to respond to the social demand. The new 2-year postgraduate clinical training and also a new specialty medical board approval for advertisement have provided various problems and controversies, and we must make efforts to overcome these problems by providing new strategies to make our practices more qualified.