So surgery hours suck. How bad is trauma surgery?

[Go Ducks]

I just read a very depressing thread about surgery hours. What's it like for trauma surgery? Is it better or worse than for the rest of surgery? Anyone have some first hand experience they'd be willing to share?

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[RafaTech]

Worse. Eveything is an emergency.....

 

[sportsperson]

you'll be doing surgeries where the person is ready to die and you have to save them instead of doing a lot of routine operations.

 

[JackShephard MD]

lol

 

[KinasePro]

Lifestyle blows, you babysit patients from other services and operate less than many other specialties (trauma is often non-operative). In rare exceptions, the lifestyle is decent if you like shift-work.

read more: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=907172

 

[MilkmanAl]

Worse.

 

[jcu]

On a scale from 0 to CT surgery, I'd say trauma surgery.

 

[kautionwirez]

On a scale from 0 to CT surgery, I'd say trauma surgery.

 

[DrSnips]

Lifestyle blows, you babysit patients from other services and operate less than many other specialties (trauma is often non-operative). In rare exceptions, the lifestyle is decent if you like shift-work.

read more: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=907172

Depends a bit on the hospital. Kings County in Brooklyn has insane amounts of real trauma to operate on. I once saw 7 stabbings and a GSW in one shift.

But I imagine most hospitals throughout the country aren't like that.

 

[Rothbard]

nm

 

[Smurfette]

Trauma is generally one of the worst surgical subspecialties from a call/hours perspective. Transplant and Trauma are the two worst ones that come to mind off hand. Worse than gen surg. Try doing a search on trauma surgery to find some old threads about trauma in general to get an idea.

 

[neusu]

Probably worse than general surgery.

Most trauma fellowships are combined with critical care. This is for 2 reasons. 1) Most trauma is non-operative, or not operated on by trauma surgeons anyway. Thus, your practice will be managing post traumatic injuries and pathophysiological recovery in the trauma intensive care unit. 2) Since you don't have a referral clinic, unless you do acute care/general surgery as well, you have more time so you are the surgical intensivist. Basically, you get every subspecialty service's sickest patients dumped in the unit and you're in charge until they die or are healthy enough to go to the floor.

As mentioned, it can be "shift" work or splintered in to call. Most jobs are academic where you have the residents/fellows to do you operating and scut work. Nonetheless, you have to physically be in the hospital a lot and babysit residents.