The Advisory Council for General Surgery accepts and endorses the definition of General Surgery as a specialty as articulated by the American Board of Surgery and as described in the special requirements for residency training in General Surgery by the Residency Review Committee for Surgery. It is essential that the full scope of this definition be retained in the actual clinical experience of the general surgery trainee. An adequate number of general surgical procedures must be maintained for comprehensive education and training programs of general surgery residents. General Surgery, as defined by the American Board of Surgery and the Residency Review Committee for Surgery, emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge in the basic sciences underlying surgical practice and the development of clinical skills in the diagnosis, preoperative, operative, and postoperative care of patients with disease as outlined on the next page. The Advisory Council for General Surgery supports the previous action of the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons in opposing the further fragmentation of Surgery, and the Council opposes the issuing of additional certificates of special or added qualifications.
Technologic advances continue to characterize the modern practice of scientific medicine.
Surgeons should continue to direct the development of and the definition of the true merit of technical innovations in many aspects of general surgical care. Some current examples include percutaneous angioplasty, fiberoptic endoscopy, intensive care technologies, and biliary lithotripsy. Surgeons should be involved in decisions to use limited interventions, which should be performed only by individuals fully trained in the procedure with continuing outcome-related quality control. Patients are best cared for when the procedure is done by or with the full and previously established cooperation of a surgical specialist capable of definitive correction of the patient's illness or likely complications. A central core of knowledge embracing anatomy, physiology, metabolism, immunology, nutrition, pathology, wound healing, shock and resuscitation, intensive care, and neoplasia.