A career in surgery is one of the most gratifying of professions. Why then are new young physicians staying away in droves? Results of the recent matching program for surgical residencies indicate that the number of unfilled categorical positions has fallen tenfold in comparison with the previous year. Not only does this augur badly for our specialty but it bespeaks of the deep-seated problems in our training programs that are not too difficult for bright young medical students to perceive. What they see are overworked, chronically sleep-deprived surgical residents who have not seen their spouses or children for days and who seem to be just barely able to carry on from one day to another. The prospects of this kind of lifestyle for years of residency and possibly for more years of practice are diverting the best and the brightest to emergency medicine or interventionistic radiology and cardiology. Does it need to be this way in order to be “trained in surgery”? How did this befall a specialty that was at its apogee just a few short years ago and what have been the consequences in terms of the quality of training?