Surgery and Stuttering

[trogdor41]

I am a medical student with a mild to moderate stutter. I'm finding myself to be really interested in surgery, but I'm unsure about how/if my speech impediment will affect my ability to be an excellent surgeon. Does anyone know of a surgeon who stutters? Is there a significant chance that taking longer to say something/issue a command will negatively affect my patients? Are there specific surgical fields where this might be less of an issue?

I'm not looking for a pep talk here. Just honest opinions. Thanks.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[VisionaryTics]

I am a medical student with a mild to moderate stutter. I'm finding myself to be really interested in surgery, but I'm unsure about how/if my speech impediment will affect my ability to be an excellent surgeon. Does anyone know of a surgeon who stutters? Is there a significant chance that taking longer to say something/issue a command will negatively affect my patients? Are there specific surgical fields where this might be less of an issue?

I'm not looking for a pep talk here. Just honest opinions. Thanks.

One of my cardiothoracic attendings had a pretty good stutter. He was the section chief.

 

[Serous Demilune]

I've seen it before as well. Generally they just tend to talk very little, and that in turn makes them more intimidating.

What are those babies doing in your avatar?

 

[deleted432032]

What are those babies doing in your avatar?

I think one just robbed the other, kinda looks like the one on the right has a gun.

 

[Kahreek]

you can do it, I would be more concerned if you wanted to be a psych

 

[Kaustikos]

Lemme say that one of my fellows was deaf and required hearing aids. And he didn't always hear everything. If you can tolerate the possibility of jokes being made about your issue when you screw up, it's no issue. Surgeons just want someone that can be trained to be a good surgeon so it doesn't seem like stuttering will be an issue.

 

[surg]

It sounds as if your stutter doesn't prevent you from getting your point across most of the time. Given that, I don't think you should have a major problem. I have known at least 2 surgeons that have moderate noticeable stutters. One is an endowed professor at a major institution, the other is now a vascular attending I think. As to whether you will endanger your patient, this is unlikely in all but the rarest of situations when split second action is truly required. Assuming it is just a few seconds of delay, I think you are fine. A full minute might be a different matter. Especially, once you have some experience you will find that you anticipate most situations and thus will not need split second response times, the occasional trauma bay situation not withstanding.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[dpmd]

I don't stutter but sometimes I am not able to say stuff that I want to say (hard to explain exactly, but lets say I want scissors but I am thinking of something else while I ask for them so I end up saying something wrong-like asking for a clamp or something stupid-like asking for that thing I need for the cutting. It is just an issue when I am not focused though. However, to avoid that I frequently use hand signals (such as miming scissor action with my fingers) which gets my point across without saying anything. Plus, a good tech is going to hand me what I need even if I don't ask for it right.