eyeball stabbing

[BlondeDocteur]

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I'm copying a thread in the EM forum-- what's your worst rotation of residency thus far? Where you wanted to stab your eyeballs out daily?

Curious if there will be consensus or not.

 

[SocialistMD]

We have a rotation where you are stationed in the ED and are the "surgery consult" resident, meaning you field every general (including transplant, oncology, HPB and colorectal), thoracic and vascular surgery consult that comes into the ED. On this rotation, you are also the primary survey for all level 1 traumas. The mantra is "they can continue to hurt me, but they can't stop the clock."

 

[FatPigeon]

With the most painful listed first:

Family med > OB/Gyn = pediatrics > psychiatry = surgery

Family medicine's rushed, woefully inadequate, laughable attempt at a 10-minute thorough history and physical, rinsed and repeated 25 times per day only to send any rare interesting finding away for some better doctor to manage, made me want to !@#$ing murder myself.

OB just had too many purulent vaginas and women barring me from the room.

Pediatrics required ear plugs, and these were neither provided nor tolerated by the administration at my school.

Loved psych and surgery.

 

[SocialistMD]

...what's your worst rotation of residency thus far?

With the most painful listed first:
Family med > OB/Gyn = pediatrics > psychiatry = surgery

LTR, n00b (I'm learning nerd speak and need the practice; it's nothing personal).

 

[Winged Scapula]

They ALL had varying degrees of sucketh-ness:

Trauma - for the endless social work and lack of penetrating/operative cases

Peds - for the parents and the high maintenance consultants and attendings

Transplant - for the high stress level

Surg Onc - for one of the "personalities"

Colorectal - for one of the "personalities"

Vascular - for one of the "personalities"

and so on...

All in all, my least favorite was Trauma as a junior (too much paperwork) and Colorectal as a senior ("personality").

 

[Samoa]

No offense, but plastics. Nothing like surgery to make an already neurotic person decompensate. However, I will say that 9/10ths of plastics residents are super cool people. But that 10th...

 

[Winged Scapula]

No offense, but plastics. Nothing like surgery to make an already neurotic person decompensate. However, I will say that 9/10ths of plastics residents are super cool people. But that 10th...

See...it almost always comes down to personalities.

I loved my Plastics and ENT electives...cool people, cool work (even though for plastics we were on Hand AND Face call for the month). I could have loved a lot of surgical subspecialties if I hadn't worked with some SOBs that made me hate it.

 

[bananamed]

No offense, but plastics. Nothing like surgery to make an already neurotic person decompensate. However, I will say that 9/10ths of plastics residents are super cool people. But that 10th...

I had a similar experience as a med student. One of the plastic residents thought it would be fun to drag me into a TRAM flap reconstruction on my post call day (yesh, I took call as a student) with a notoriously slow surgeon.

None of them spoke to me. None of them taught anything. They had me scrubbed and then eventually motioned for me to step away from the table so I couldn't even observe. I was ready to take a swing at him at the end of the SIX hour procedure........😡

And that's when my desire to pursue plastics met its demise.

 

[Samoa]

Yeah, I know some residents like that.

WS, I think if one or two jackasses can make you not like the work, it's probably not the right field for you anyway. Put another way, when you like a field despite the occasional (or frequent) jackass, you should probably give it serious consideration.

 

[AlloImmune]

The VA Spa. Where the surgical residents mantra, "trust no one, expect sabotage" rings truer than anywhere else.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Yeah, I know some residents like that.

WS, I think if one or two jackasses can make you not like the work, it's probably not the right field for you anyway. Put another way, when you like a field despite the occasional (or frequent) jackass, you should probably give it serious consideration.

I can appreciate that...although we had more than 1 or 2 jackasses in most every department. 😉

 

[Bruingirl6]

VA "float"

You are the VA plastic surgery resident (aka the sacral decubitus ulcer consult service).....in addition, you get to also attend every plastic surgery, vascular surgery, and general surgery clinic. MISERABLE