Decline in the surgical workforce in urban and rural Japan and the regional quota system as a potential solution to surgeon shortages.

IF 1.6 4区医学 Q2 SURGERY

Surgery Today Pub Date : 2025-07-01 DOI:10.1007/s00595-025-03082-2

Nozomi Karakuchi, Masatoshi Matsumoto, Yoshihiro Saeki, Kazuaki Tanabe, Hideki Ohdan

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Purpose: This study examined the decline in the number of surgeons in Japan compared with other specialists in urban and rural areas using a secondary analysis of government-owned census data. Furthermore, it evaluated the impact of the regional quota system in addressing the shortage of surgeons by comparing their proportion among the graduates of this system with that of the overall physician population.

Methods: We analyzed national census data (2012-2022) to evaluate trends in the numbers of physicians and surgeons in 47 prefectures from urban and rural groups. Data on regional quota graduates were obtained from an open-source study.

Results: The number of physicians increased by 13.4%, whereas the number of surgeons decreased by 2.1%. The change in the number of surgeons per 100,000 population did not differ between the rural (+ 0.6%) and urban (+ 0.7%; p = 0.997) prefectures. Regional quota graduates had a higher likelihood of being surgeons (9.5%) than all (8.2%; p < 0.01) or young (age 26-39 years) physicians (7.8%; p < 0.01), although female representation was highest among regional quotas (38.7%) relative to all (22.8%; p < 0.01) and young (32.8%; p < 0.01) physicians.

Conclusion: The regional quota demonstrates the potential of addressing surgeon shortages.

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日本城乡外科劳动力的下降和区域配额制作为外科医生短缺的潜在解决方案。

目的：本研究通过对政府拥有的人口普查数据的二次分析，研究了日本外科医生与城市和农村其他专家相比数量的下降。此外，它通过比较区域配额制在该系统毕业生中外科医生的比例与整体医生人口的比例，评估了区域配额制在解决外科医生短缺方面的影响。方法：分析2012-2022年全国人口普查数据，评估47个地级市城乡医师和外科医生数量的变化趋势。区域配额毕业生的数据来自一项开源研究。结果：内科医师人数增加13.4%，外科医师人数减少2.1%。每10万人口中外科医生数量的变化在农村（+ 0.6%）和城市（+ 0.7%）之间没有差异；P = 0.997)。地区配额毕业生成为外科医生的可能性（9.5%）高于所有地区(8.2%；结论：区域配额制显示了解决外科医生短缺问题的潜力。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Surgery Today 医学-外科

CiteScore

4.90

自引率

4.00%

发文量

208

审稿时长

1 months

期刊介绍： Surgery Today is the official journal of the Japan Surgical Society. The main purpose of the journal is to provide a place for the publication of high-quality papers documenting recent advances and new developments in all fields of surgery, both clinical and experimental. The journal welcomes original papers, review articles, and short communications, as well as short technical reports("How to do it"). The "How to do it" section will includes short articles on methods or techniques recommended for practical surgery. Papers submitted to the journal are reviewed by an international editorial board. Field of interest: All fields of surgery.