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ASA President Dr. Patrick Giam’s recent Monday Morning Outreach (May 18, 2026) highlighted ASA's Rural Access Scholarship Program. This program calls to mind a similar awareness-raising effort in our specialty. By Alan Jay Schwartz, MD, MSEd, with Brian Harrington, MD

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In the 1960s, the ASA recognized that medical students infrequently elected an anesthesiology career path. This was not surprising as medical student formative education provided very limited exposure to our patient care discipline. Without experiencing the clinical activities, anesthesiology was out of sight and out of the medical student’s mind.

ASA discussed and confronted this shortcoming in medical education. In 1964, the ASA acknowledged in its House of Delegates Interim Report of the Committee on Anesthesia Survey,

“The reason [medical students are] not considering anesthesiology is that [they have] been given no sufficient reason to believe that it fully meets [their] view of a doctor's work…The demonstration that anesthesiology does involve the care of patients and is therefore a doctor's work can best be made in the clinical context where the full range and the true quality of its work can be taught. Clinical teaching is therefore of greater importance in attracting students to anesthesiology than it is in any other specialty…The student should be shown from the beginning that anesthesiology represents an extension of the medical approach to specialized fields of care and that it is not simply an accommodating service to surgery…The great physician[anesthesiologist]-teacher is probably the most effective instrument [role model] for attracting people of talent to any medical work.”¹

In 1965 the ASA House of Delegates, Committee on Training and Recruiting reported that medical school curriculum time for anesthesiology education was significantly limited and recommended a solution to this deficiency in medical education by establishing elective student preceptorships.² The Anesthesiology Preceptorship Program was modeled after experiences championed by Thomas K Burnap, MD³, a clinical anesthesia teaching role model. Under direct supervision of an anesthesiologist, students experienced hands-on anesthesia patient care. Burnap’s program began in 1964 with 20 students growing to 60 in 1965 and expanding to >600 students in 1967-1969. In 1970, I (AJS) personally benefited from the Burnap Anesthesiology Preceptorship Program. That eight-week summer clinical experience vividly exposed the depth and breadth of anesthesia patient care as well as the opportunity to offer a humanistic approach to patients often terrified by the prospect of the unknown, “being asleep”. The Burnap Anesthesiology Preceptorship Program was real patient contact. When enamored by every anesthesia patient care experience that followed, anesthesiology was always the bar that every other student experience had to surmount.

Bruhn, Epstein and Burnap measured and published the very positive impact on recruitment of future anesthesiologists that sprung out of the Burnap Anesthesiology Preceptorship Program.^4-6 Today, the consistently strong performance of our specialty in the residency match program speaks to the enduring impact of these efforts.⁷

The ASA Rural Access Scholarship Program has been administered through the ASA Committee on Access to Rural Anesthesia Care since 2007 and is intended to heighten awareness of anesthesia care in rural settings. The Rural Access Scholar program is a Burnap Anesthesiology Preceptorship Program mime. With recent legislative initiatives expected to further challenge the already fragile state of rural healthcare^8,9, engagement of informed anesthesiologists and recruitment of medical students is vital to the well-being of our rural citizens¹⁰. We anticipate that the greatest value of this already successful scholarship effort is yet to be realized.

References

1. American Society of Anesthesiologists Committee on Anesthesia Survey. House of Delegates Interim Report (600-1) March 1964
2. American Society of Anesthesiologists Committee on Training and Recruiting. House of Delegates Annual Report (635-1.1) & (635-1.3) July 1965
3. Burnap TK. Anesthesiology Preceptorships. THE NEW PHYSICIAN-American Medical Student Association. 16: A13,14,63,64 1967
4. Bruhn JG, Burnap TK. Evaluation of the National Preceptorship Program in Anesth1966-1970 Anesthesiology 1972: 37; 79-86
5. Bruhn JG, Epstein BS, Burnap TK. Senior Medical Students’ Knowledge of and Attitudes Toward Anesthesiology in Ten Medical Schools Anesthesiology 1973: 39; 94-103
6. Bruhn JG, Epstein BS, Burnap TK. Specialty Choices of Medical Graduates Taking Anesthesiology Preceptorships: A Follow-up Study 1974: 41; 270-274
7. Rock-Klotz J, Miller T. 2025 Anesthesiology Residency Match: Trends and Insights. ASA Monitor 2025; 89:1,4-5
8. Howren MB, Hansen J. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act - Implications for Rural Health Care. JAMA 2025; 334:1143-4
9. Howard H, Shachar C. The Rural Health Transformation Program - An Avenue for Promoting Administrative Policies. N Engl J Med 2026; 394:625-7
10. Yan C, et al. Rural America Nears a Cliff: Federal Funding Cuts Threaten Health Systems and Anesthesia Care. Anesthesiology 2026; 144:1057-9

Alan Jay Schwartz, MD, MSEd is Adjunct Professor, Anesthesiology & Critical Care, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Associate Editor of ANESTHESIOLOGY (Editor, Review of Educational Materials and Images in Anesthesiology), Associate Editor of Anesthesiology Open, Editor of The Pharos, Trustee of The Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology and a Docent at The Mutter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Brian Harrington, MD is a clinical anesthesiologist at the Billings Clinic Hospital, Billings, Montana, a member of the ASA Committee on Rural Access to Anesthesia Care, the Alternate Director for Montana of the ASA Board of Directors and a Trustee of The Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.

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