How early did you all know that you wanted to be surgeons?

[DoctaJay]

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Hey everyone. I've only shadowed surgeons so far and I think surgery is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm currently applying to medical school now and I know things can drastically change before I start rescidency. What I wanted to know is how early did you all know that you wanted to go into surgery? Did anyone know before that got into medical school?

 

[HTD]

Grade school.

 

[Winged Scapula]

After my 3rd year medical school rotations when I did surgery and then internal medicine (my prior choice) and found I liked the former and loathed the latter.

Well, there was that period in junior high when I wanted to be a neurosurgeon, but that was before I discovered boys! 😉

 

[stebb]

After standing in the OR for 10 hours+ retracting just salivating at the thought of getting to close....

 

[Blade28]

Freshman year, college.

 

[DukeSurgeon]

Freshman year, college.

Since 8th grade.

 

[footcramp]

August 31, 2006

 

[Jocomama]

I knew it in High School
I knew for sure Plastic Surgery when I was 18.
Unfortunately, if you are finding it out now, while shadowing, it's much to late, and you have absolutely no chance on God's green earth to ever become a Surgeon.
HA HA
Listen - as you can see it differs among all of us. Some didn't know until their last year of Medical School. Others thought so, then dropped out. There is a PGY-1 that got a coveted Integrated Plastic Surgery slot; and realized he would rather be an internal medicine physician. Just do it - Nike

Hey everyone. I've only shadowed surgeons so far and I think surgery is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm currently applying to medical school now and I know things can drastically change before I start rescidency. What I wanted to know is how early did you all know that you wanted to go into surgery? Did anyone know before that got into medical school?

 

[njbmd]

Hi there,
I decided that I loved surgery after my first operative case on my first day of my general surgery clerkship during my third year of medical school. I was leaning toward pediatrics (adolescent medicine) when I entered medical school but after surgery, everything else I did that year seemed awful. I still love surgery and cannot imagine doing anything else.

njbmd 🙂

 

[RxnMan]

Hi there,
I decided that I loved surgery after my first operative case on my first day of my general surgery clerkship during my third year of medical school. I was leaning toward pediatrics (adolescent medicine) when I entered medical school but after surgery, everything else I did that year seemed awful. I still love surgery and cannot imagine doing anything else.

njbmd 🙂

Should we cue that Sheryl Crow song about "the first cut is the deepest?" 🙂

OP, I'm looking at surgery now because of a similar experience to njbmd. I was shadowing a surgeon and he let me assist in a femoral de-rotational osteotomy. That is, you cut, rotate, and plate a patient's femur to better orient the knee and distal limb (which helps in ambulation). I had a blast, and so that's what I'm looking at now. But we've both got plenty of time to decide, so go out there, and have a good time investigating all of your options.

 

[Jocomama]

OK mon, so dis rotation of the femoral bone is in which direction?

Is it de rotational or is it rotational. I donno des tings, so when you say de rotation, I need to know; as in de-bone or de-femoral

You see rotation can go one way, then de-rotation goes the other way. But de "de" in de sentence can be a "the" -

You know man, I been up smoking de ganga so I dunno what it eez dat I am saying in de post here, mon!

Should we cue that Sheryl Crow song about "the first cut is the deepest?" 🙂

OP, I'm looking at surgery now because of a similar experience to njbmd. I was shadowing a surgeon and he let me assist in a femoral de-rotational osteotomy. That is, you cut, rotate, and plate a patient's femur to better orient the knee and distal limb (which helps in ambulation). I had a blast, and so that's what I'm looking at now. But we've both got plenty of time to decide, so go out there, and have a good time investigating all of your options.

 

[MossPoh]

Hmmm. I think I'm in the same boat as the poster here. I started shadowing and tagging along with different docs. Including GI, Cards/Pulm, Rads, Surgery and well an obgyn procedure...I am so stoked to get back into the OR tommorrow again. I acknowledged the cool stuff with the other things but I was still kind of bored and found the only things that really got me excited were the procedures and not all the talking and stuff. Of course the surgery guys where I am are on overload...I saw 3 gallbladders, a colon resection, and 2 hernias the first day.....then some vascular stuff, removal of infected mesh, more hernias, some procedure that I don't know the name but was really cool and then rounded and sat in the office for my first drug rep meal.

 

[Dr JPH]

What I wanted to know is how early did you all know that you wanted to go into surgery? Did anyone know before that got into medical school?

3rd day of my first surgery rotation...3rd year of medical school

prior to medical school I was thinking EMED or Anesthesia

 

[skb21]

I haven't decided that I will definitely go into general surgery just yet, but I may be leaning that direction. Before I got into medical school, I worked as an O.R. Tech and absolutely loved it. My mind was pretty much set on doing either general surgery or orthopaedic surgery when I got into medical school. I am now just starting my third year. I've done three weeks of my family medicine rotation. I was willing to give family medicine a good look, but after three weeks, I think family medicine is just a little too slow paced for my taste. I could honestly care less about having these long conversations about the weather and what Sally Joe is doing. I'm more of the type that I want to go in, introduce myself, have the patient tell me why he/she is there, do an examination, make a decision on what needs to be done, and then go on to the next room. So, surgery is back at the top of my list, and my favorite cases to scrub on as an OR Tech were the exploratory laparotomies. I'm actually getting the opportunity to scrub on an abdominoperineal resection this week. I don't really want to get into the mindset that this is what I definitely want to do before I do some more rotations though. I want to be damn sure that this is the right decision. Unfortunately, I don't do my surgery rotation till March and April of 2007. That doesn't exactly give me a lot of time to set up my away elective rotations at different residency sites.

 

[DoctaJay]

Thanks everyone for your responses! I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't into the whole surgery thing too early (I'm applying now). I've pretty much only shadowed surgery residents, but from what I've seen so far surgery seems to offer instant results, which is what I always like in life. I know the lifestyle sucks sometimes, but it used to be worse before the 80 hour work week, so I try to think positively about it. I just hope I'm not handicaping myself by coming into medical school already gunning for surgery.

 

[njbmd]

I just hope I'm not handicaping myself by coming into medical school already gunning for surgery.

Ya know, Doctajay,
I had a classmate who sat behind me first and second year who wanted to be a neurosurgeon. He joined the neurosurgery interest group; did research in neurosurgery and did extremely well in his coursework and on boards. He's now close to finishing up his neurosurgery residency in a great program and will be a neurosurgeon.

There is nothing "gunning" about knowing what you want and doing what you have to do to get it. The saddest folks in my class are the ones who did the "bare minimum" to pass and then finished third year only to decide that they wanted a competitive specialty. Guess what? They ended up doing something that was not what they wanted because they didn't have the grades/board scores to get into that competitive specialty.

Do the best that you can and set your sights as high as you can. In the end, if you do well, you have choices. You might change your mind once you do your third year clerkship in surgery but having good grades and good board scores gives you more options.

Like my classmate, you may be "into" surgery all the way through medical school and there is nothing wrong with that either. Good luck, my friend!

njbmd 🙂

 

[toxic-megacolon]

Hey everyone. I've only shadowed surgeons so far and I
think surgery is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm currently applying to medical school now and I know things can drastically change before I start rescidency. What I wanted to know is how early did you all know that you wanted to go into surgery? Did anyone know before that got into medical school?

I didn't decide until my 4th year of medschool! Its never too late!