Our Fellowship Training and a Look into the Future

A collection of multiple manuscripts and editorials have been presented over the last several years with the goal of providing a snapshot of our national training platform. These reports have included an attempt to characterize our core identity—the surgical and didactic work that exists in fellowship programs.^1,2 Subsequent manuscripts explored insight from program directors into their careers, program content and the future of our specialty ³ and editorials have illustrated how our fellowship programs compare to other pediatric surgical subspecialties. ⁴ The final manuscript in this grouping provides us insight into the makeup of our fellows, the attractants in their journey, including impact of early exposure, and what of their lives are brought into our programs. These snapshots have given us a place to begin.

“The only constant is change” seems particularly pronounced at this time for our specialty. There is momentum toward redirecting our future (redefining our specialty) and energizing our collectives. Several recent manuscripts have addressed this topic including career outcomes for previous fellows ⁵ and job opportunities that exist for surgeons who hone their skills through a craniofacial fellowship. ⁶

Our query of recent fellow graduates reveals some basic truths about how we recruit, nothing surprising. We capture interest early through experiences and mentorship. Our goal is not to convince every resident in plastic surgery toward our specialty. It should be to provide those who have the aptitude and interest an opportunity to explore and intentionally make a decision regarding further training. Outreach may begin years before formal surgical training, but the real harvest will come from engagement with residents early. There should be opportunities for interested learners to be exposed to our specialty despite limitations in their own programs. We should be able to clearly demonstrate by the content of our fellowship programs and the messaging from our Societies that what we have now will be bigger and better in the future, much of it defined by the very learners finishing our programs. Finally, we need to recognize that these initiatives will ultimately be successful only at an individual and personal level.

It is important to collate what we have gathered from these reviews and allow it to shape our outreach and recruitment, redefine and move us forward. Manuscripts that touch on these topics may contain individual authors but reflect the common voice of our specialty. My journey began with thoughts of contraction. It has evolved into an exciting call to expand and grow.