Great questions...... What I did was I first chose one of those famous trauma surgeons I was telling you about in my previous post. I set an appointment with his secretary, and after having been cancelled on about 5 times, I finall was able to sit before ole' mighty trauma surgeon. I explained that I had an MPH, wanted to use it to conduct clinical outcomes research for him, and also wanted to shadow when I had free time. I was greeted with a very cold look, and an apparent disinterest on his part. He said something to the tune of "Oh well, I guess I would be amenable to having you shadow me and do research with me, lets set up an appointment next week." Given that I was cancelled on 5 times (even though each of those five times I saw him sitting in his office reading Time Magazine)...so I set up the appointment and just never showed. My attitude was "I'll find a surgeon who is more receptive".
Then I approached the CT surgeons, specifically the pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons. These peds CT surgeons tend to be a different breed of surgeon (much nicer, down to earth) perhaps because they deal with kids a lot. I set up a meeting, showed up at the specific date/time at the office, only to find the secretary pointing me toward the hospital. She said Dr. X would like you to come over to the OR, they are doing a case right now. So I walk across the street to the hospital, thinking I would be waiting outside of the OR for hours. Much to my surprise I found a scrub nurse waiting with a set of scrubs for me. She said go into OR #10 and stand back by anesthesia. When the surgery that they were doing (Tetralogy Repair) hit a slow point, Dr. X introduced himself and his partner to me from across the drape and asked if I wanted to scrub. Keep in mind I had only been in medical school for about 4 weeks at this time. I blerted out a "Yes, I would love to scrub!" The rest is history. Over my first two years of medical school I scrubeed on >70 cases with these surgeons, mostly pediatric heart cases, but branched off into some adult (including heart transplants). They knew I was only in my preclinical years, so they would pimp, but only with a level of questioning I would be expected to know as a preclinical medical student (ie. anatomy, physiology, a little path questions). I would get the OR schedule the day before, and read for about 30 minutes on the case I would go scrub on the following morning. Granted, when I say "scrubbed" on a case, as a medical student in a congenital heart case, I'm standing next to the first assistant, typically holding a "pump sucker" used to evacuate blood from the surgical field and back to the heart-lung machine. But nonetheless I'm there, present, asking questions, participating, and showing an interest.
I guess I just lucked out with coming across such a great group of surgeons. They knew I wanted to be a surgeon, I showed them I wanted to be a surgeon, and it resulted in some great menotring relationships developing.
My approach was systematic. I started with the trauma surgeon, got blown off in my opinion, and just moved on down the surgery department list until I found someone I clicked with. It just so happened that was the second person on the surgery department list.
After scrubbing, observing, helping take patients to the ICU, etc....for about 5-6months, I then revealed that I had an MPH in Epidemiology and would like to get involved in some clinical research. My god, if I only knew then what I had gotten myself into. The chief pediatric heart surgeon had years, yes years, of data back logged, that he just never had the time to analyze/write papers. So me expressing an interest to him in research were magical words to his ears. I spent lots of time in medical records, pulling patient charts, creating MS Access databases, running statistical analyses, and writing papers. It all culminated in a paper in the Annals of Thoracic surgery which was published in November of this year, right in the middle of interview season.
You might be asking yourself, how did Johnny Cash find the time to do this. Well at my medical school class attendance is not required during the first two years (except for PBLs). So I would keep up with my studies by reading note sets, texts, review books. I would not attend class, but rather would spend my days in the OR with the surgeons. My grades did not suffer, and actually went up because I was liking medical school (mostly do to my experiences in the OR). My wife is a professional, and is very involved in her own work. She was very understanding in my pursuits, and I'm lucky to have such an understanding spouse. I did however dedicate one day a week (typically saturday or sunday) to our relationship and did no school work, no scrubbing on surgeries, etc. That was viewed as "Our time" for "Our relationship" and worked well for us.
I hope this information helps you out. Please send any other questions you have to this thread.
