A high point of every Clinical Congress is the Presidential Address, which the newly initiated ACS President delivers at Convocation. This year, Anton N. Sidawy, MD, MPH, FACS, spoke on the theme he has chosen for his presidential year: “The House of Surgery®: A Home for All Surgeons.”
His key message was that unity among surgeons across all surgical disciplines permits the profession to address issues that no single surgeon or discipline can tackle alone.
“I believe there are overarching systemic challenges in healthcare that warrant particular attention,” he said, before describing several factors affecting US surgery. These included the corporatization and consolidation of healthcare that compromises patient care and physician autonomy; destructive profit-seeking in healthcare by private equity and venture capital; and the problem of too few practicing surgeons, maldistributed nationally.
He further focused on the shortage and maldistribution of surgeons, including sharing a prediction that the Association of American Medical Colleges made in 2024: by 2036, the country will experience a shortage of 10,000 to 19,900 surgeons, as part of a broader shortfall of as many as 86,000 physicians. Dr. Sidawy used additional data to describe the insufficient number of surgeons in disciplines that include his own vascular surgery. Finally, supported by information first published in the April 2024 ACS Bulletin, Dr. Sidawy noted the surgeon workforce is facing decline in most surgical disciplines as smaller generations replace a larger generation nearing retirement.
“Strategic policy interventions to boost training capacity are no longer optional,” Dr. Sidawy said. “They are imperative to reverse workforce attrition.”
He described numerous ways the ACS is attempting to ensure that the US will have a sufficient, equitably distributed surgeon workforce with adequate working conditions. These include strenuous advocacy, support through ACS Quality Programs, and efforts to update surgical education.
He emphasized that these advancements often are made feasible by the engagement of surgeons with the ACS: “Unity serves as the cornerstone of meaningful advancement in a world increasingly defined by complexity and fragmentation.”
Throughout his speech, Dr. Sidawy emphasized that the ACS has the unique ability to provide a forum and resources for surgeons to unite.
“With this infrastructure, this stature, and this resolve, we must grow and draw closer together as surgical specialties,” he said. “In so doing, our collective voice will resonate more powerfully, our influence will multiply, and we will be better equipped to meet the challenges before us and realize the goals all surgical specialties share.”
The full Convocation ceremony is available online, and it will be available as an episode on The House of Surgery podcast in the future.
Dr. Sidawy is a vascular surgeon who completed his medical degree in Aleppo, Syria, and surgical training in Washington, DC, and Boston, Massachusetts. He has enjoyed a long career at George Washington University in Washington, DC, where he is currently a professor and the Lewis B. Saltz Chair of the Department of Surgery.
As a leader of the ACS, he has served on the Board of Regents for the past 9 years, including a year as its Chair (2021-2022). He also has been given the LaSalle D. Leffall Award and has become the namesake of a lectureship by the Metropolitan Washington Chapter of the ACS, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the surgical profession and community. A past president and Lifetime Achievement Award recipient at the Society for Vascular Surgery, he also helped that organization collaborate with the ACS on creating the Vascular Verification Program, an ACS Quality Program.
