surgery

[Kevo]

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my friend says he knows a surgeon who works 50 hours a week. is this possible considering call and all? how feasible is it to limit your schedule as a general surgeon, for example? any thoughts?

 

[droliver]

It's definately possible if you superspecialize & thus are not on a call schedule for ER or acute in-house consults.

The things I'm thinking of include:

Hernia "specialists" - who only do outpatient hernia repairs

Bariatric (fat) surgeons - all their cases are elective, but their patients have higher morbidity than regular patients & complications are more frequent. Also alot of their patients are crazy. Incidentaly, bariatric surgery is the single most lucrative subspecialty in general surgery at the moment

Breast cancer surgeons (general surgeons who only do breast cases)- again all their patients are elective cases with little on call problems requiring acute. This field is rapidly becoming its own subspecialty field within general surgery with a lot of 1 year fellowships available after gen. surgery.

Endocrine surgery

Hepato-Billiary/Surgical Endoscopists - these are surgeons who do mostly elective liver cases, but who also proficient @ ERCP (and thus can bypass gastroenterologist for common bile duct or pancreatic duct problems)

There are probably other ones that I'm not thinking of presently. This list is mostly just general surgeons with enough of a referal base to be able to not do things they don't want to deal with & avoid the usual general surgery emergent consults.

 

[Billie]

droliver is right. The surgeon I worked with worked LESS than 50 hours/wk. She never took call. Took Thursdays and Sat/Sun off. We had surgery in the mornings, then went to her office, and we were usually done by 3-4pm. She had a family and wanted a life and for her that was more important. Plus her pt load was a lot like droliver's list - she did a lost of breast biopsy/lumpectomy surgeries, lots of lap choley, some hernia repair, but other than that, not much else.