In the time of significant generational diversity – Surgical leadership must step up!

The diverse attitudes and motivations of surgeons and surgical trainees within different age groups present an important challenge for surgical leaders and educators. These challenges to surgical leadership are not unique, and other industries have likewise needed to grapple with how best to manage these various age groups. The authors will herein explore management and leadership for surgeons in a time of age diversity, define generational variations within “Baby-Boomer”, “Generation X” and “Generation Y” populations, and identify work ethos concepts amongst these three groups. The surgical community must understand and embrace these concepts in order to continue to attract a stellar pool of applicants from medical school. By not accepting the changing attitudes and motivations of young trainees and medical students, we may disenfranchise a high percentage of potential future surgeons. Surgical training programs will fill, but will they contain the highest quality trainees?