Abstract

Background: Declining interest in surgical specialties has raised concerns regarding the sustainability of the surgical workforce worldwide. In Türkiye, general surgery residency training is centrally allocated through the Medical Specialty Examination (TUS), yet longitudinal national data on placement dynamics remain limited.

Aim: To evaluate temporal, institutional, and geographic patterns of general surgery residency placements in Türkiye between 2019 and 2025.

Methods: This retrospective descriptive study analyzed 2,617 general surgery placement records obtained from fourteen consecutive TUS cycles conducted between 2019 and 2025. Quota fill rates were evaluated according to hospital type, geographic region, metropolitan status, supplementary placement process, and quota category.

Results: The overall mean quota fill rate was 48.3%, while 47.9% of quota records remained completely unfilled. Fill rates showed an overall downward trend across the study period, despite year-to-year variation, with the lowest annual levels observed in 2024–2025. City hospitals demonstrated the highest mean fill rate (82.8%), followed by training and research hospitals (59.2%) and university hospitals (40.5%). Metropolitan provinces showed higher observed fill rates than non-metropolitan provinces (54.7% vs. 23.8%). Nearly all quota records entering the supplementary placement process remained unfilled (99.9%).

Conclusion: General surgery residency placements in Türkiye demonstrate an overall decline over the study period, accompanied by marked institutional and geographic variation. Lower observed fill rates in university hospitals and non-metropolitan regions suggest an uneven distribution of residency placement outcomes across the training system. These findings highlight the need for continued monitoring and targeted workforce planning to support the sustainability of the future general surgery workforce.

Keywords: general surgery, residency training, medical workforce, TUS, surgical education, workforce planning

License

Copyright (c) 2026 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to Cite

1.
Çavdar Ş, Demir S, Yavuz A, Yazıcı F, Süer MS, Balas Ş. General surgery residency placements in Türkiye: institutional, geographic, and temporal patterns from 2019 to 2025. J Trends Med Invest. 2026;2(2):72-81. https://doi.org/10.64512/JTMI.2026.29

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