[Management tasks in surgery: challenges and chances]

Management in surgery is an umbrella term for the activities of a leading surgeon in the fields of strategic planning, organization, coordination, leadership and control. At the same time the management describes the surgeons who carry out the practical administration of a surgical unit. In current times administrative management activities in a surgical unit are taking up an increasing amount of time of a surgeon parallel to the treatment of patients. In the last 17 years this was enhanced by the introduction of the disease-related groups (DRG) system for the classification and billing of surgical treatment within the German hospital healthcare system, which further enhanced the economic pressure on hospitals and surgical units. To enable surgeons to carry out a sustainable management of a surgical unit they need to acquire a variety of management qualities parallel to the advanced training as a specialist and the surgical training.