Background

The ASMBS Leadership Academy is conducted at the ASMBS Weekend to prepare surgeons for practice, while in their fellowship. The aim of this analysis is to gather the views of the younger generation in training on issues regarding practice patterns and career development.

Methods

An online survey was conducted at the last two ASMBS Leadership Academy Meetings at the ASMBS Weekend. There were 15 questions. There were 78 respondents. There were 23 respondents had incomplete surveys were not included in the final analysis. There were 24 fellows surveyed at the Leadership Academy on November 2022 and 31 attendees in Jan 2022.

Results

Fifty-eight percent of attendees were interviewing for employment after their fellowship with 3.64% already employed. Eighteen percent had employment secured for after their fellowship. Of the academic fellows, 29.1% believe that private practice will no longer exist in 2030 and 10.9% of attendees believe that we will have Medicare for all by 2030. Fellows in academic programs ranked their fellowship as either “best decision of my life” or “great” (96.4%) and 3.6% ranked it as “useless (not good/not bad).” Ninety-three percent of attendees said they would do a bariatric fellowship again. Of those that said they would not, all were from a robotic fellowship program. Of those that would do a bariatric fellowship again, 80% stated they would do so at the same institution.

Conclusions

The fellows that attended the ASMBS Leadership Academy overall were very pleased with their fellowship experience, but many have not secured employment.