Hi guys. I don’t have any reasons or facts which led me to conclusions concerning competitiveness of NS in upcoming decade. I’m just wondering if there are any grounds for the situation to change. Like health care reform or some other reasons which would make NS less (or more) popular among medical graduates. Can anybody make any prognoses basing on some serious facts or tendencies?

If anything it will become more competitive. If healthcare reform really occurs (which does not seem very likely at this point), salaries are going to go down across all fields of medicine. However, Neurosurgery and many of the other surgical subspecialties that are procedure-based are going to be the last groups to have their incomes slashed and it will be decreased much less than the other fields. This is partly because of the small and well-organized professional societies in neurosurgery coupled with the extreme importance in delivering priceless life-saving healthcare (e.g. contrasted with a family medicine doctor).