I loved surgery for about two weeks, now, after having spent six weeks in surgery, I've grown to hate it. My experience with surgery has been awful due to the very malignant culture that is fostered at my site.
I've found my experience to be utterly frustrating due to the following (there are more reasons, but I've only listed a few...):
1- the residents are plain nasty. I understand that they are overworked and tired, but that does not excuse them from being chronically nasty. I've also found it quite interesting that the surgery interns are extremely nice to the P.A. students, yet horribly nasty to the med students. It seems that surgery residents have forgotten what it's like to be a med student- meaning, that the first two years of med school focuses on the science behind medicine and NOT the clinical aspects. I have a sneaking suspicion that the residents at my site are overwhelmingly nice to the P.A. students due the fact that these students have the upper-hand when it comes to clinical stuff (writing soap notes, knowing how to perform procedures, etc...).
2- the residents just don't want to teach. I was yelled at by my chief resident last night when I asked him to show me how to inject contrast into an NG tube. He looked at me like I was ******ed when I asked him to show me and he further went on to tell me it was common sense. 🙄 I had now idea what a f'n piston tube was last night also, so this wasn't exactly common sense to me 🙄 Also, surgery is my first clerkship. I had no idea how to write a soap note, and it took 3 weeks for one of the residents to actually teach me how to write one. I was labeled a 'disorganized' student since I was unable to write a coherent soap note for the first three weeks.
3- The residents expect us to read their minds. If we don't, we are yelled at accordingly. Oh, and getting yelled at is something that I endure all day and from varying sources: attendings, residents, scrub nurses, cafeteria workers (just kidding here, but you get the picture). By the way, most students at my site have similar complaints of getting yelled at by just about everybody they encounter.
4- When the residents are not yelling at us, they go out of their way to make sure that it is known to us that we are 'bastard children' who exist to simply annoy them. Most current example I can give on this would be the following: at this past week's morbidity and mortality session, my friend was holding a seat for me while I got coffee before the session started. An intern came by and wanted to sit in this seat (mind you that the room was full of empty seats). My friend told him that I was sitting there (and my book was on the seat), he proceeded to tell her that he 'was pulling rank' and then proceeded to sit on her hand. 🙄 Another example of this would be breakfast time. The residents have us follow them in the morning to the cafeteria, and we are not allowed to sit with them. We are to sit at the side tables (this seating arrangement reminds me of the kiddie tables that I sat at when attending family dinners), if one of the students dares to sit at the big people's table, they are told to move by a resident if one happens to come in late to breakfast.
5- Retracting and cutting stitches for 8 hours straight is fine with me, as long as the resident doesn't mind explaining a few things to me after the surgery. Unfortunately, more often that not, the resident doesn't want to teach (see 2), and the attending pretends that the students aren't there (except when you don't read their mind correctly when it comes to stuff like knowing the exact way a particular attending likes his sutures cut- making this dire mistake will lead to recognition in the form of yelling more often than not).
I absolutely detest surgery at the moment. I'm sick of the malignant personalities, the daily beratings, and the overall attitude that surgeons are smarter than everyone on the planet (which is rampant where I am, and I know this since I hear on a daily basis how much smarter the surgeons are compared to everyone else in the hospital). What gets me most though is the lack of teaching. I don't mind having my ass scutted out all day long, as long as I received some form of teaching in return.
Oh well, I've got two more weeks to go 😎
