The worst part of surgical training is that you spend years and years doing something other than surgery. You wonder why 20% of general surgery residents quit... it's not because they stopped loving surgery. It's because they have to endure endless crap as interns, junior residents, and sometimes upper level residents, just to someday get to do what they really set out for.
Medical students apply to surgery knowing that they will work harder and longer hours than most. I don't know anyone who went into surgery thinking the hours would be great. What most people underestimate is how much non-surgical non-educational garbage is forced on surgical residents. Surgery residency does not have to be 5 years and it does not have to be 120 hours a week. If surgeons in training were actually taught how to be surgeons rather than paperwork drones, we could easily train excellent surgeons in 3 years.
My regret is not that I chose to be a surgeon; my regret is that the educational process in surgery is so archaic and outdated that we are forced to deal with so much garbage, and quite frankly it's a shameful waste of time. The question is not whether surgery is worth working harder and longer than most. I like surgery a lot and to me, doing surgery is definitely worth putting in extra effort. I however don't agree that surgical residency is worth the extra time and sacrifice, because a shameful portion of that time is completely wasted doing mindless garbage.
