Goodbye to Surgery

[IFNgamma]

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No more rectals, begging someone to let me put in a NGT and getting cursed at, dealing w/ poop, vomit, EC fistulas, nasty leg ulcers, unna boots, diabetic feet, sacral decubs, "talking to the family," umpteen lame consults, dictating discharge summaries, getting to work at 0430, asking "did you have gas/BM?", getting consent for procedures for which I have never ever seen/have no idea how its done.

there's probably way more annoying crap that I didn't mention, but can't think of them right now.


To all of you who want to do general surgery, please do yourself a favor and be sure you can stand the things I mentioned above before you take the plunge.

goodbye.

I'll be over at the Anesthesia forums from now on. 😀

 

[SLUser11]

No more rectals, begging someone to let me put in a NGT and getting cursed at, dealing w/ poop, vomit, EC fistulas, nasty leg ulcers, unna boots, diabetic feet, sacral decubs, "talking to the family," umpteen lame consults, dictating discharge summaries, getting to work at 0430, asking "did you have gas/BM?", getting consent for procedures for which I have never ever seen/have no idea how its done.

there's probably way more annoying crap that I didn't mention, but can't think of them right now.


To all of you who want to do general surgery, please do yourself a favor and be sure you can stand the things I mentioned above before you take the plunge.

goodbye.

I'll be over at the Anesthesia forums from now on. 😀

I don't think it's fair to leave a "to all who want to do surgery" warning when many of the things you're upset about are program-specific.

Either way, I hope you find happiness in a different specialty.

 

[ddmo]

Best of luck, see you on the other side of the drapes.

 

[dynx]

No more rectals, begging someone to let me put in a NGT and getting cursed at, dealing w/ poop, vomit, EC fistulas, nasty leg ulcers, unna boots, diabetic feet, sacral decubs, "talking to the family," umpteen lame consults, dictating discharge summaries, getting to work at 0430, asking "did you have gas/BM?", getting consent for procedures for which I have never ever seen/have no idea how its done.

there's probably way more annoying crap that I didn't mention, but can't think of them right now.


To all of you who want to do general surgery, please do yourself a favor and be sure you can stand the things I mentioned above before you take the plunge.

goodbye.

I'll be over at the Anesthesia forums from now on. 😀

Another one bites the dust.

 

[littlescoundrel]

Man, all that stuff really does sound annoying. I would be ill too. But do you know how many pre-meds like me would love to just have the opportunity to do surgery? You need to go do some backbreaking manual labor for a while, man. Then maybe you would be more appreciative of the opportunity you've been given. Sorry, just try seeing it from my point of view.

 

[littlescoundrel]

Sorry I didn't mean to imply you were given everything I realize you earned everything you got up to this point. It's just hard for me to identify when I have to go to my part time job and throw around 50+ lb. crates. I hope you can see where I'm coming from.

 

[Samoa]

I don't think it's fair to leave a "to all who want to do surgery" warning when many of the things you're upset about are program-specific.

I don't know, I wouldn't call three items out of a list of fifteen "many." The rest of them seemed pretty universal.

 

[smq123]

Man, all that stuff really does sound annoying. I would be ill too. But do you know how many pre-meds like me would love to just have the opportunity to do surgery? You need to go do some backbreaking manual labor for a while, man. Then maybe you would be more appreciative of the opportunity you've been given. Sorry, just try seeing it from my point of view.

I'm sorry, but why on earth would he need to try seeing it from your point of view? 😕

This is a surgery forum - and one of its primary purposes is to let surgery residents vent and discuss issues close to them. There's obviously nothing that prevents med students and pre-meds from posting, but requesting that a surgery resident, on the surgery forums, try to see things from the pre-med's point of view is kind of ... unreasonable.

The LAST thing he needs is some pre-med, who has not spent a day as a surgery intern, telling him to appreciate his opportunities. It's not that he's not appreciative, he's just venting. Let him have his moment.

And I have many classmates who are non-trads, who DID do backbreaking manual labor, who still hated their surgery rotations - which are just 6 weeks long, and with fewer call responsibilities than interns. So yes, you may have a very physically intense job, but that doesn't mean that a surgery internship is a walk in the park by comparison.

 

[littlescoundrel]

Get a life, girl. Everything you post is nothing but negativity.

 

[littlescoundrel]

You do what I do, then you can tell me about my life, stupid girl.

 

[littlescoundrel]

You're in medical school, girl. A lot of people don't even get to go to medical school. Yet all you do is bitch about it. You stupid dumb ass.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Users are reminded that insults are a violation of the SDN Terms of Service and are not tolerated in the professional forums. Please keep the conversation civil with personal comments.

 

[smq123]

You do what I do, then you can tell me about my life, stupid girl.

You do what the OP does, then you can tell him about his life.

All I suggested is that you recognize that SDN is not all about you. And that you have some compassion for the OP. The OP got sick of surgery (I'm sure he has his reasons), and got out, taking a moment to vent. Why not let him have that?

You're in medical school, girl. A lot of people don't even get to go to medical school. Yet all you do is bitch about it.

Where, in my post, did I "bitch" about med school? 😕

 

[DrDre311]

You're in medical school, girl. A lot of people don't even get to go to medical school. Yet all you do is bitch about it. You stupid dumb ass.

We're all aware that smq is a girl. It doesn't make her stupid. Lighten up, it's a damn internet message board.

 

[Blade28]

You're in medical school, girl. A lot of people don't even get to go to medical school. Yet all you do is bitch about it. You stupid dumb ass.

There is absolutely no need to personally attack her - please keep all posts civil and professional in language.

 

[littlescoundrel]

All apologies.

 

[Faebinder]

All apologies.

Apology not accepted. I'll refrain from insulting you so as not to receive probation.

To the OP. I feel you, I did it for a year. Best of luck.

 

[njbmd]

No more rectals, begging someone to let me put in a NGT and getting cursed at, dealing w/ poop, vomit, EC fistulas, nasty leg ulcers, unna boots, diabetic feet, sacral decubs, "talking to the family," umpteen lame consults, dictating discharge summaries, getting to work at 0430, asking "did you have gas/BM?", getting consent for procedures for which I have never ever seen/have no idea how its done.

there's probably way more annoying crap that I didn't mention, but can't think of them right now.


To all of you who want to do general surgery, please do yourself a favor and be sure you can stand the things I mentioned above before you take the plunge.

goodbye.

I'll be over at the Anesthesia forums from now on. 😀

Good luck and enjoy completing your residency. Hope you learned something that will be useful in the future.

 

[pillowhead]

Man, all that stuff really does sound annoying. I would be ill too. But do you know how many pre-meds like me would love to just have the opportunity to do surgery? You need to go do some backbreaking manual labor for a while, man. Then maybe you would be more appreciative of the opportunity you've been given. Sorry, just try seeing it from my point of view.

I really hate to respond to a pretty obvious troll but this just made me laugh.

I've just finished intern year. I did backbreaking manual labor for a while--lifting 50-100 lb boxes of books in the receiving area of a large bookstore hour after hour, day after day. (And I'm a girl on top of all of it, too! 😱) No way did that even come close to the stresses and difficulties of intern year. My back, arms, and shoulders would be burning at the end of every day and the dust creeps into parts of your body you don't even want to imagine. But I've never have had quite as nice muscle tone in my upper body since though.

 

[Sarcophageal]

Really and truly, the cool thing about a 50+lb crates is that it doesn't decompensate, it doesn't have family, it doesn't come to the ER, and it doesn't die.

I realized this year it is a big jump from books to actual people.

And just b/c you get to med school and all that jazz, doesn't mean you won't have to deal with 100+lb rocks.

 

[drdrew267]

can't insert songs onto this forum. "Where is the looooooovvvveee? Where is DA loooooovvveee??? Where is the love, love, love, love loooooooooooooooooove!" Ah, thank you Black Eyes peas....lol - looks like some people need to drink more! Me? I survived my first night on call!! Huzzah!

 

[Miami_med]

Um....

A lot of us in medicine have worked manual labor jobs. I personally did two summers in an un-airconditioned warehouse in Florida pushing 1000 lbs carts around a 10,000 sq ft area and hoisting 100 lbs boxes into stacks in the back of a box truck in which it was close to 140 degrees.

I then worked through college for two years at The Home Depot in college loading cars on the lot and pulling housing framing packages off of the shelves.

I then worked for another year doing maintenance work, part of which included pulling a fence out of the ground, using a sledgehammer to free the fence posts.

That's life. Many of us didn't grow up with a silver spoon. It's really not very strange to have worked blue collar jobs before medical school. It's also apparently really common for pre-meds to overestimate the physical ease of surgery.

 

[Pioneer Village]

Let's not try and teach our red sox fan here any lessons on morality and proper treatment. He clearly isn't the "filling out secondaries and flying to interviews" type of pre-med, but rather the "i'm about 15-years-old and saw too many episodes of Gray's anatomy" type of pre-med. So he's more like a pre-PRE-pre-med. When I was at that stage I said my fair share of stupid things on the internet, as well.

It's just a shame there isn't some sort of filter, i.e. IQ test required before posting to ensure that your "mental age" is at least 19+. That would solve some of the problems with ridiculous posts, I think. Please consider.

 

[Entei]

Let's not try and teach our red sox fan here any lessons on morality and proper treatment. He clearly isn't the "filling out secondaries and flying to interviews" type of pre-med, but rather the "i'm about 15-years-old and saw too many episodes of Gray's anatomy" type of pre-med. So he's more like a pre-PRE-pre-med. When I was at that stage I said my fair share of stupid things on the internet, as well.

It's just a shame there isn't some sort of filter, i.e. IQ test required before posting to ensure that your "mental age" is at least 19+. That would solve some of the problems with ridiculous posts, I think. Please consider.

I propose that a good screening test for determining fitness to post on SDN would be to automatically exclude those with Red Sox avatars.

Although, I have to admit, Tired's reply above made the whole thread worth it. 7/10

 

[Winged Scapula]

Let's not try and teach our red sox fan here any lessons on morality and proper treatment. He clearly isn't the "filling out secondaries and flying to interviews" type of pre-med, but rather the "i'm about 15-years-old and saw too many episodes of Gray's anatomy" type of pre-med. So he's more like a pre-PRE-pre-med. When I was at that stage I said my fair share of stupid things on the internet, as well.

Except that this poster claims to be a college graduate in other posts.

Nonetheless, we've all (or most of us) have posted stupid things here before so let's get back on topic. I'm sorry that the OP had such a bad experience and hopefully will find anesthesia much more to his/her liking.

Besides, I packed peaches in an unairconditioned warehouse in the central valley of California at the height of summer, so there's my manual labor story.😛

 

[Blade28]

Besides, I packed peaches in an unairconditioned warehouse in the central valley of California at the height of summer, so there's my manual labor story.😛

I worked on an organic farm in a town 100 miles south of Sydney for 6 months after high school!

I spent my 18th birthday on my hands and knees picking peas and beans. 🙂

Then there was all the riding of horses, ploughing of fields, planting of crops, operating of tractors and forklifts, etc.

 

[leviathan]

I love premeds who already know their specialty choices based upon their favourite television shows. 🙂

 

[littlescoundrel]

I don't know what you do, but I sure know what I do.

And by "what I do" I don't mean to imply that it's your mom (on a regular basis, whenever she calls) because that would be a TOS violation.

I know, you've got to be careful. Just like I wouldn't mean to imply that your joke was so funny, your father and I both fell out of bed laughing. Because that would be a TOS violation.

 

[SLUser11]

I don't know what you do, but I sure know what I do.

And by "what I do" I don't mean to imply that it's your mom (on a regular basis, whenever she calls) because that would be a TOS violation.

I know, you've got to be careful. Just like I wouldn't mean to imply that your joke was so funny, your father and I both fell out of bed laughing. Because that would be a TOS violation.

Mom and dad jokes are sooo junior high. My vote is to go after eachother's grandma. Nothing burns worse than a good "your mom's mom" joke......

 

[smq123]

You're in medical school, girl. A lot of people don't even get to go to medical school.

🙂 Thanks for sending the apology. Apology accepted.

I know that the climb to get into med school is long and tough, and very discouraging at most points. But I think that that's all the more reason to support the other people who are at various points of that journey with us, even those that are farther along than we are.

Best of luck to you in your particular road.

 

[DrDre311]

I hate the Red Sox. Such a damn bandwagon team. I hope they lose every game they play.

 

[beastmaster]

I know, you've got to be careful. Just like I wouldn't mean to imply that your joke was so funny, your father and I both fell out of bed laughing. Because that would be a TOS violation.

LOL ... now there's the comeback of the month IMHO 👍

 

[Pilot Doc]

I don't think it's fair to leave a "to all who want to do surgery" warning when many of the things you're upset about are program-specific.
QUOTE]

I think those things are more intern/junior resident specific. They do get better generally.

 

[spearman]

Buenos dias!

Are you moving up to neurosurgery...?

This remind me of what one MS2 at UMAB said to me following his introductory experience in clinical gastroenterology: "there is money in that s...!

Adios. Larga Vida y Prosperidad!

 

[San_Juan_Sun]

I hate the Red Sox. Such a damn bandwagon team. I hope they lose every game they play.

Me too. I hate the New Yankees.

 

[Blade28]

Buenos dias!

Are you moving up to neurosurgery...?

Anesthesia, I think, judging from his OP.

 

[MossPoh]

I hate the Red Sox. Such a damn bandwagon team. I hope they lose every game they play.

I just stay away from american league teams. I can never be accused of the bandwagon that way.

I'll throw in my manual labor stuff. General farm labor, picking watermelons, landscaping (in Florida where you have to use an 8+ pound sharpened shovel), cleaning horses and their stalls, moving 50+ pound containers of milk along with doing an entire football stadium worth of dishes. (I went to PSU and we did all the catering..and I did nearly all the cleaning) and building docks. Oh good times! We gotta whip it out and compare you know? I kind of like manual labor. Shawshank Redemption-ish. Just makes me feel alive..especially when you throw in a cold beer afterwards.

 

[Lamborghini1315]

No more rectals, begging someone to let me put in a NGT and getting cursed at, dealing w/ poop, vomit, EC fistulas, nasty leg ulcers, unna boots, diabetic feet, sacral decubs, "talking to the family," umpteen lame consults, dictating discharge summaries, getting to work at 0430, asking "did you have gas/BM?", getting consent for procedures for which I have never ever seen/have no idea how its done.

there's probably way more annoying crap that I didn't mention, but can't think of them right now.


To all of you who want to do general surgery, please do yourself a favor and be sure you can stand the things I mentioned above before you take the plunge.

goodbye.

I'll be over at the Anesthesia forums from now on. 😀

what you expect..you must have gone into your rotation hoping to see some healthy people with no superficial wounds and smelling like roses hehe ..anyways good luck with your endeavors.

 

[Luv2Cut]

Best of luck to INFGamma. But I think that INFgamma makes a valid point. Are those things that you are willing to do in order to finish your surgery training. I plan to get into a GS or ENT program in the next year but, frankly, I don't think I would want to do a surgery residency without having done the scut at sometime.

My training is in FM before the 80 hr work week and if you got slammed as an intern then all the better. You were better for it, having lived through it, and if you can handle watching your DKA patient or a post-surgical catastrophe in the ICU, while you have 2 laboring women on L&D, and getting paged again from the ER, and generally getting slammed during an all night shift then you can certainly handle just about anything that comes along.

INF, this may sound crazy but I think you will not regret done a year of surgery. You can always say you did a surgical internship and you will be better for it, no matter what you do. Those experiences are gold and will probably make you a better anesthesiologist. I know a doc who was my mentor in residency. He did a year of surgery and switched to FM. But he did so many central lines and art lines and so much critical care he never really got it out of his system. He became a critical care hospitalist in a local community hospital. All the surgeons loved him because they could just turn their patients over to him in the ICU. He loves it, makes a ton of money and so busy he took on 2 more hospitalists. Best wishes to you.

L2C

 

[DrDre311]

Are you kidding? He basically just copied my insult and changed "mom" to "father". It was weak, and he got banned. Pretty lame.

Agreed. Weak, unoriginal, and not funny.

The next logical step would have been to intimate that whomever you're trying to insult was into bestiality, dendrophilia, or some combination thereof.

 

[BlondeDocteur]

ooh, dendrophilia...

[insert joke about 'wood' here]

 

[IFNgamma]

sorry for my long absence, I just moved to my new residency in a different state and I have had no internet access for like a week.

thanks for all your support. And yes I have switched to Anesthesia and loving in so far! I got July 4-6 off, imagine that! If I was still in surgery I would have no doubt been on-call and worked like a dog these last 3 days...*shudder*

I agree that I did learn a lot and my experience as a surgical intern will definitely be helpful to me but there's no denying that being a surgical intern does indeed suck no matter what.

It's sad that no matter how much you like surgery you WILL be discouraged, A LOT, and you WILL free like crap and hate what you do sometimes if not most of the time, no matter how good, smart, experienced you are because of the huge amount BS you have deal w/ each and everyday. Every single one of the residents I talked to at my program has thought about quitting, and I really think it's not far from the truth that every SINGLE surgical resident has thought about it too. They just don't do it cuz it's too much of a pain to find another residency or they have invested way too much time to quit.

Now if I wanted to I could probably suffer through it and finish, but WHY??! Why should I live such a miserable life? If I continued I would probably have turned out to be one of those stereotypical grumpy mean surgeons because I had to suffer through such a hellish experience as a resident.

I just wanted to share my experience for the future MSs thinking of doing surgery, you have been WARNED!

PS: remember the ROAD to happiness (Radiology, Ophthalmology, Anesthesiology, Dermatology)😀:

 

[IFNgamma]

what you expect..you must have gone into your rotation hoping to see some healthy people with no superficial wounds and smelling like roses hehe ..anyways good luck with your endeavors.

but there was just no way for me to know what I was getting myself into, as a MS you just don't know what it's really like to be a resident. You go through your surgery rotation and everyone is super nice to you, u do whatever the hell you want and t doesn't matter, you get to see all the cool stuff without seeing the bad. And plus they always tell you the "truth" about the program at your interview 😡

 

[Winged Scapula]

We should have some anesthesia residents or residents from other specialties who switched INTO surgery post just for an alternate view, to "WARN" the medical students that surgery doesn't have to be like this.

It sounds like, so far, you made a good decision for yourself, IFNGamma. But undoubtedly the experience you describe is not the experience of surgery residents everywhere. Programs are different. What people want is different. There are plenty of posters here who are happy in their programs and are staying, not because they can't figure out what else to do, but because they are fulfilling a dream.

Best of luck to you...

 

[IFNgamma]

We should have some anesthesia residents or residents from other specialties who switched INTO surgery post just for an alternate view, to "WARN" the medical students that surgery doesn't have to be like this.

It sounds like, so far, you made a good decision for yourself, IFNGamma. But undoubtedly the experience you describe is not the experience of surgery residents everywhere. Programs are different. What people want is different. There are plenty of posters here who are happy in their programs and are staying, not because they can't figure out what else to do, but because they are fulfilling a dream.

Best of luck to you...

switching from Anesthesia to Surgery??!! Unthinkable! j/k, I'm sure it's been done, but I just can't imagine that.

 

[Winged Scapula]

switching from Anesthesia to Surgery??!! Unthinkable! j/k, I'm sure it's been done, but I just can't imagine that.

It actually has been done and more than once...and lets not forget, you've been an Anesthesia resident for less than a week, so the honeymoon isn't over yet.😉

As an aside, do you think you had unrealistic expectations about what surgery entailed, didn't really love surgery or do you honestly think you picked the wrong program? Generally people who bail out after the first year made a mistake in choosing surgery in the first place. EVERY specialty will have things that you don't like to do...give us a call after you've spent a month on the chronic pain service and tell us how wonderful anesthesia is!

 

[Blade28]

You go through your surgery rotation and everyone is super nice to you, u do whatever the hell you want and t doesn't matter, you get to see all the cool stuff without seeing the bad.

Yeah...this is why I always encourage those med students that are even remotely interested in/curious about surgery to pursue the most difficult MS-III (and MS-IV rotation, later on) rotation possible. You want to see what surgery's like at your med school's most malignant hospital, not at the cushy private place where you don't take call and the ancillary staff takes care of every little thing.

I worked a ton of hours as a med student and was beat on all the time...yet still loved it, so I knew it was right for me.

Not saying this was your situation - I'm more referring to my own experiences in med school and residency.

 

[Pilot Doc]

It sounds like, so far, you made a good decision for yourself, IFNGamma. But undoubtedly the experience you describe is not the experience of surgery residents everywhere. .

To me it sounded like the experience of surgery INTERNS everywhere

 

[Winged Scapula]

To me it sounded like the experience of surgery INTERNS everywhere

I dunno...I never begged anyone to have me place an NGT, was cursed at, only rarely placed Unna Boots (although its easy, not sure why this is a problem; generally our vascular nurses put them on and off, although I did on occasion when I could do it faster and get the patient out), sacral decubs went to the Plastics residents and certainly didn't see nearly as many EF fistulas as he apparently did.

However, I agree that almost all of us have had the same experience (ie, getting consent for procedures we've never seen or done, getting to work at 0430, etc.). But it appears to me that IFNGamma admits that he did not know enough about surgery and its residency going in before making his decision. Unfortunately, that isn't a rare situation. The problem I have with his posts is his assumption that what he found to be miserable and untolerable is so for everyone and that it means that students should stay away from surgery.

His message that he didn't know enough about surgery and didn't like it enough before starting residency got lost in his message that all surgery internships/residencies suck and no one should pursue one. He is a perfect example of someone who didn't know what he was getting into and ended up choosing the wrong specialty. It happens but that isn't reason for him to assume that the situation will be the same for everyone. In addition, what is describing may very well be program specific.

No one likes the things he's mentioned but for most people who are actually really interested in surgery rather than being concerned with how much time off or call they have, these are the things that we put up with to get to our goals. You cannot tell me that there aren't such things in any field. Believe me, you and I both know, that he will get lame consults for pain management, will eventually have to work on a weekend, and will spent a lot of time talking to families while on ICU rotations.

IFNGamma's complaints are valid but they are the complaints of an INTERN...which he probably would have made if he was a MEDICINE INTERN as well (dictating discharge summaries? Those are EASY on Surgery compared to Medicine). Those guys don't have it any easier and I suspect that if he had done a Prelim Medicine year, the post would be identical with just a few names and situations changed.

 

[SLUser11]

To me it sounded like the experience of surgery INTERNS everywhere

I agree that a lot of the things he's describing are junior resident-specific, but it's also very likely that him being at a crappy program had a lot to do with his decision.

If I remember correctly, IFN is an IMG, which likely limited his options last March.......