personality

[deleted9493]

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I'm curious. What kind of people generally love practicing surgery day in and day out? I'm interested in surgery (among others) because it seems as though surgeons have the ability to fix the body on a macroscopic scale...while at the same time being able to assess a patient from a general practicioner's standpoint. I know residents in surgery work alot of hours...how much does this change post-residency? Are we still generally looking at 80 hour weeks...or closer to like 60? Why did you go into surgery and would you do it again?

 

[triathlete411]

Check out this website - it should answer your questions
www.facs.org/residencysearch/contents.html

 

[apma77]

90% of general surgeons (and gen surg subspecialty) are a bunch of pricks and the funny part is most of these pricks werent even close to top of their class in med school. A malignant field i wouldnt touch with a 10 foot pole not to say they make $hitty money these days and work like dogs (woof woof)

 

[smithani]

Smooth dude. You are my hero. Your post is so ******ed that I hope for your sake it is a joke.

 

[scutking]

For me, the attraction to surgery as a career is the hands-on treatment of disease. We get to see the tumor and cut it out, while the internist can only diagnose it and prescribe chemotherapy or radiation. We get to see the tract of the bullet and feel the liver laceration, while the EM physician can only suspect it from a CT scan. We can open the heart and fix a damaged valve, while the cardiologist is unable to do this. I love surgery because for us disease is not merely an abstraction that we imagine in our minds, but something we must touch, confront, and cure with our hands every day. This is not intended to be a knock on our non-surgical collegues. They are very intelligent, work hard, and deserve our respect. As surgeons, we're just lucky enough to get to see what we're fighting against!

 

[hotbovie]

I take issue with apma77 and his/her insult of surgeons. At both my institution as well as two others where I did visiting electives, surgeons are some of the nicest individals. Most people really enjoy the surgery rotation here, even those who don't choose it as a career. It is the most useful, hands on rotation and the one with the least amount of irrelveant scut for students. We have a few jerks for attendings, but I've also encountered jerks for attendings in all other areas as well.

I'm an older med student, and I just love to be in the OR. I love the gratification of actually fixing a problem. I also happen to enjoy trauma and the ICU environment. I like the fact that surgeons get down to business and fix things. Medicine clinics drive me nuts...you spend a long time talking with the patient, going into a lot of detail, then make some adjustments in the medication and have them come back in a few weeks or a few months to see if they are any better. In surgery you see your results much, much faster.

Your schedule after residency can be what you want. You can go into a private practice with lots of partners, and have little call. Or you can work in academics...typically more hours, lower pay, but you have more complex cases. Just depends what you like.

Surgery attracts all kinds of people, with all kinds of interests/hobbies. Once you've finished your surgery rotation, ask yourself "Could I be happy with a career choice where I never went into the OR again?" If the answer is no, you are a surgeon!

 

[bonecutter]

Apma77, perhaps the problem is not with everyong else but rather with yourself. It is highly unlikely that 90 percent of people in any field are a bunch of pricks. It is much more believable to think that you rubbed 90 percent of people the wrong way and reaped the rewards.

Bonecutter

 

[Celiac Plexus]

I am going in to surgery because I love the OR. I love washing my hands in cherry-scented warm water at the scrub basin and joking around with the residents and attendings. I love the order and heirarchy of the OR. I love that sometimes attendings have to make important decisions while operating without quibbling. I love the warmth of a patient's abdomen as I run the bowel. I love identifying anatomical structures. I love cutting, sewing, and tieing knots. I love the ability to cure by cutting.

I love talking to patients in the prep room... reassuring them and listening to them. I love the intimate details that patients share with me once they know that I am part of the surgery team. I love getting called at 2am to help solve, or assist in the solution of an unforeseen problem with a patient. I love being comfortable with putting in central lines, IV access, and drawing blood. I love being comfortable cleaning out wounds that most of my peers would kill to avoid smelling. I love watching the senior residents comfortable with EVERYTHING that happens. I love being the guy who always volunteers to stay late and do the "scut" that everyone hates to do... you can learn a hell of a lot about management that way. I love it when one of my classmates, or a resident, is beat down and I ask to pick up some of their work because I can, and because I want to bust my ass for them.

I love office hours when we can briefly reconnect with our patients and check on their progress. I love it that I will never spend half an hour sitting on my butt discussing whether we should or should not "bump the dig" by 0.00005 on a patient with a-fib and CHF.

I love the camraderie of surgeons. The "hammerhead" mentality, and the bond that exists between men and women that undergo at times harrowing training so that they can achieve the skills, and knowledge necessary to be a surgeon.

I would become a surgeon even if I knew that I would work 100+ hours a week, and be one of the lowest paid doctors around. I don't care about prestige, or status. I just think that surgery, and surgeons are cool as hell, and God willing, I too will one day join their ranks.

 

[scutking]

Celiac Plexus: Well said. You summed it up perfectly for all of us. That apma jackass is just trying to get a rise out of us - just ignore him. Believe me - it ain't worth it.

 

[womansurg]

That was very nice, Celiac Plexus. Well said!

 

[surge]

Great job, CP! Thanks!

 

[Goofyfoot]

I totally agree with the above!!! I would like to add that being a surgeon provides the unique ability to relieve the patient of severe pain or sparing life through direct hands on intervention (you can fill in your own scenarios). Furthermore, surgery is an art. To actually see the anatomy and variable presentations, the fine detail required in some cases as well as the imagination required in some instances to correct a problem on the spot as not all problems have the same solution.

My interests are in pediatric surgery where the patients, depending on their age, are sometimes unable to speak for themselves. The gratification of helping a child, creating a life long change in a life, and the relief it may provide a family is enormous!

 

[lucas]

apma obviously scrathed his or her nose after scrubbing in for the first time ever, and got yelled at by the surgeon to get out of the OR. He or she ran home and cried and has hated surgery ever since. You dont have to be a prick to be a surgeon, but dont be a cry baby like apma either.

 

[daveyboy]

😕 why would somebody with an obvious disdain for surgery and surgeons take the time to read a suregry message board in the first place. maybe it is just me, but, rather than bashing the field of surgery, wouldn't it just be easier to avoid that which you do not care for?

 

[hemoccult]

Originally posted by Celiac Plexus
I am going in to surgery because I love the OR. I love washing my hands in cherry-scented warm water at the scrub basin and joking around with the residents and attendings. I love the order and heirarchy of the OR. I love that sometimes attendings have to make important decisions while operating without quibbling. I love the warmth of a patient's abdomen as I run the bowel. I love identifying anatomical structures. I love cutting, sewing, and tieing knots. I love the ability to cure by cutting.

I love talking to patients in the prep room... reassuring them and listening to them. I love the intimate details that patients share with me once they know that I am part of the surgery team. I love getting called at 2am to help solve, or assist in the solution of an unforeseen problem with a patient. I love being comfortable with putting in central lines, IV access, and drawing blood. I love being comfortable cleaning out wounds that most of my peers would kill to avoid smelling. I love watching the senior residents comfortable with EVERYTHING that happens. I love being the guy who always volunteers to stay late and do the "scut" that everyone hates to do... you can learn a hell of a lot about management that way. I love it when one of my classmates, or a resident, is beat down and I ask to pick up some of their work because I can, and because I want to bust my ass for them.

I love office hours when we can briefly reconnect with our patients and check on their progress. I love it that I will never spend half an hour sitting on my butt discussing whether we should or should not "bump the dig" by 0.00005 on a patient with a-fib and CHF.

I love the camraderie of surgeons. The "hammerhead" mentality, and the bond that exists between men and women that undergo at times harrowing training so that they can achieve the skills, and knowledge necessary to be a surgeon.

I would become a surgeon even if I knew that I would work 100+ hours a week, and be one of the lowest paid doctors around. I don't care about prestige, or status. I just think that surgery, and surgeons are cool as hell, and God willing, I too will one day join their ranks.

I just wanted to resurrect this quote from CP as I recently came across it. It is like scripture or something. If this quote doesn't touch a person regarding the beauty and attraction of becoming a surgeon, I don't know what will.

Thanks to CP for this keen insight.

 

[gosh]

Guys, give apma a break...you know that most gen surgeons can't save a life in an airplane if THEIR life depended on it. So, you're not knocking the nonsurgeon at all who would end up saving your life!

 

[Skylizard]

Just to add something you can find in the above posted link:

Traits of a surgeon:
Flexibility: the lives of most surgeons revolve around the unexpected or the inconvenient. One is less likely to be a successful or happy surgeon when one is interested in going home every night at 5 pm, never to return until 9 am the next day; and An ability to make decisions with an incomplete database: the nature of surgical diseases is such that one frequently must make important decisions based on incomplete information. This last consideration leads to a chronic private sense of insecurity, but we think it helps reemphasize the "art" of history-taking and physical diagnosis....the surgeon only rarely has time to sit down, put one's feet up, and look at life and practice at arm's length. To be a surgeon is to NEVER BE A PART-TIME DOCTOR. One cannot overemphasize this point, for in virtually every circumstance, the surgeon's private life is different from neighbors and nonsurgical friends. It is a testimonial to the extraordinary allure of surgery that so many of us remain entranced with it.

Finally, surgeons are, in an intellectual sense, conservative. Surgeons' diagnostic and therapeutic decisions are often far more immediately critical to a patient's life, limb, or livelihood than are the decisions of other physicians; when the consequences of failure often result in major morbidity or mortality, one tends to be much less adventuresome about attempting something new.

 

[Skylizard]

Originally posted by gosh
Guys, give apma a break...you know that most gen surgeons can't save a life in an airplane if THEIR life depended on it. So, you're not knocking the nonsurgeon at all who would end up saving your life!

Actually, surgical procedures such as chest tube placements have been performed on airplanes and saved lives. I do not know that it was actually a surgeon that did the procedure but one could have. Further, surgeons run so many codes that I have no doubt a surgeon could save a life on a plane if need be.

This poster spends every opportunity to not only try to represent his negative perspective but he does so by outright and directly throwing insults at most ("90%") of the surgeons. He clearly is not looking for a "break".

Originally posted by apma77
90% of general surgeons (and gen surg subspecialty) are a bunch of pricks and the funny part is most of these pricks werent even close to top of their class in med school...

 

[womansurg]

As a discipline, there's quite a large proportion of psychiatric disorder in the field of surgery. Personality disorders are especially prevalent. Historically, I'd wager that 90% of surgeons truly were pathologic, and there are still a lot of crazy old men shouting at people in hospital ORs.

Part of it is that people with odd motivations - power, ego, the desire to dominate - are attracted to surgery and are therefore disproportionately represented. (I'm always a little nervous talking to someone who says they were drawn to surgery because they like the 'hierarchy' of it). Part of it is that decent, sensitive, well balanced people choose other fields, knowing what the surgical environment is like, or they don't survive the training. And finally, those who do survive are often altered, and hardened, by the experiences they've suffered.

Apma77 seems typical for someone who has had an unpleasant, humiliating experience with the people of surgery, and who remains very angry about it. There are more than a few of those people around (anesthesiology is full of them...)

If you are hurt and bothered by apma77's characterizations, then resolve to not live up to them. As more and more surgeons yield to the demands to conduct themselves with decency and ordinary good graces, these sterotypes will fade.

 

[Skylizard]

Originally posted by womansurg
Apma77 seems typical for someone who has had an unpleasant, humiliating experience with the people of surgery, and who remains very angry about it. There are more than a few of those people around (anesthesiology is full of them...)

If you are hurt and bothered by apma77's characterizations, then resolve to not live up to them.

One of the things that has motivated me to pursue surgery as a career in spite of not getting a categorical position after completing a preliminary year was a letter from a patient and their family complementing me on the compassion I showed. I have no intention of being a "prick" as apma77 seems to be so fond of referencing. I am not hurt by his comments. Hurt individuals that perpetuate this anomosity hurt the healthcare environment.

 

[womansurg]

Originally posted by Skylizard
your reply is mature and insightful as usual WS. I always appreciate it

thank you, Loki

 

[Skylizard]

Originally posted by apma77
90% of general surgeons (and gen surg subspecialty) are a bunch of pricks and the funny part is most of these pricks werent even close to top of their class in med school...

Just another on target quote:

A surgeon is frequently stereotyped by nonsurgical colleagues and by advisors in the Dean's office, and may be the object of jealousy or even scorn from physicians in other specialties. When surgical patients do poorly, they frequently do very poorly, and the honest surgeon finds it easy to assume the blame for all of the patients' problems despite the fact that some surgical patients come to a bad end because of their own self-abuse.... Finally, the surgeon frequently is, at the end of an exhaustive diagnostic and therapeutic exercise, the only one who really can find the answer or solve the problem!

 

[aram]

What is all this crap about surgeons not making any dough. Ct surgeons make between 500-600K each year. Also, on the physician salary survey, nrsg. and ct surgeons are always the highest paid physicians in Medicine. Is this not true?

 

[aram]

More bluntly said, could you afford a mansion and a ferrari on a ct surgeons salary?