General surgery is an area of medicine that deals with the internal organs of the body. This includes the abdomen, lungs, heart, kidneys, bones, joints, throat, digestive tract, reproductive organs, spleen, gall bladder, and thyroid gland among other things. The scope of this medical field and hospitals is quite broad and depending on where you fall within it can mean different things. One thing is for certain though and that is that the number of people who are undergoing general surgery these days is growing at an alarming rate.

As a result of this trend in workforce planning, there has been a need to provide a better definition and explanation of this term. For those who may not be familiar with it, general surgery can be divided into two major branches. These branches are Oncology and Plastic Surgery. While Oncology primarily deals with cancer, plastic surgery on the other hand is centred on reconstructive surgery. While the two branches do share some core curriculum and some of their practitioners come from each of the branches, they are very different when it comes to the actual techniques used in performing the procedures.