Task Sharing in Global Anesthesia and Surgery: Workforce Concerns

This review highlights the role of task sharing in temporarily solving the human resource crisis in anesthesia and surgery in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) while emphasizing the need for these countries to increase the workforce of anesthesiologists and surgeons as a permanent solution. Despite the obvious need for specialists to provide safe anesthesia and surgery in the LMICs, there is still a critical shortage of skilled personnel to fill this gap. Task sharing and task shifting are temporary solutions to this crisis but continue to be a challenge. Even with such measures in place, the current specialist workforce density is a far cry from the recommended safe anesthesia and surgical workforce density. Task sharing is crucial to the future of anesthesia and surgery in LMICs, but it must be balanced with quality patient care. Upscaling of the current specialized surgical workforce in LMICs must be both qualitative and quantitative.