The founding of the Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education.

The Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (hereafter the Mayo Foundation), the precursor to the Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education, was incorporated in 1915. The Mayo Foundation, which was affiliated with the University of Minnesota Graduate School, aimed to establish a higher standard for training medical specialists. Together, the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Foundation pioneered a graduate medical education program that allowed residents to earn master's and PhD degrees in clinical medicine and surgery. Unlike elsewhere in the United States, the residency training program was not pyramidal. (In a pyramidal residency program, each training year, some residents are systematically eliminated to reduce the number of more senior trainees.) All those who started the Mayo Foundation residency program had an opportunity to finish depending on their own merits. Louis B. Wilson, the first director of the Mayo Foundation, became a major figure in graduate medical education in the 1920s and 1930s. Although the granting of graduate degrees in medicine and surgery stopped over time, Mayo Clinic ultimately became the largest site of graduate medical education in the world.

Cardiology workforce: a shortage, not a surplus.

The United States faces a serious shortage of cardiologists as our population ages and the burden of heart disease grows. The problem is compounded by a cutback in the number of cardiology training positions a decade ago. Dramatic scientific, technological, and procedural advances fueled the growth of cardiology during the second half of the twentieth century. Patients benefited from access to specialists who transformed new knowledge into longer and better lives. Demand for cardiologists is strong and growing. An adequate supply of highly trained cardiologists is necessary to promote discovery and innovation and to help deliver state-of-the-art care to a growing number of cardiac patients.