Scalpel losing edge: Few medical grads opt for surgery

Scalpel losing edge: Few medical grads opt for surgery 

Anuja.Jaiswal@timesofindia.com 

New Delhi : India’s top-performing medical graduates have made their preference clear in this year’s NEET-PG counselling — career stability is trumping the operating table. In the first round of NEET-PG 2025, medicine and radiology dominated choices among high-rankers while general surgery saw one of its steepest drops in recent years, reflecting growing concerns over stress, long training pathways and mounting medico-legal pressures. 

Among the first 1,500 candidates, 632 (42%) chose MD General Medicine and 447 (30%) opted for MD Radiodiagnosis. Only 99 students (6.6%) selected MS General Surgery, indicating a widening shift away from high-risk procedural fields. A strong preference for Delhi also emerged, with six of the top 10 candidates choosing Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. 

Dr Neeraj Nischal from the department of medicine at AIIMS said, “MD Medicine is the gateway to almost all superspecialities, so it has always been in high demand. Students feel diagnostics offers a more controlled work life, though that may not always be true.” The fall in interest for surgery, senior clinicians say, is rooted in deeper anxieties. “Surgical branches are very demanding — you need passion. Otherwise, burnout is inevitable,” Dr Nischal said. 

Surgeons themselves acknowledge that the field has steadily lost appeal. “It takes much longer to settle down because general surgery is only the first step — you usually need to super-specialise in neurosurgery, cardiac surgery, urology or paediatric surgery,” said Dr Piyush Ranjan from AIIMS surgery department.