In answering your question...
General Surgery was FUN in med school. The attendings let you do things in the OR (bovie, laser) if they knew you were interested, the residents let you do cool stuff on the floors/ICU (line placement), little to no clinic duties, no "REAL" responsibility/liability (besides Honors vs. Pass). However, its true that 4th year med students are the top of the totem pole until you reach like your 4th or 5th year in Gen Surgery residency. You are the lowest of the low as an intern and 2nd year. Reasons why I switched: q3 or whohoo q4 call, You get all the late night calls from nurses asking you to update a family on a crosscover patient that you dont know at 11pm, you get more calls from the nurses about 2am to see whether to give the Tylenol you ordered prn for a temperature that is 37.9 instead of 38C, you get more calls from the lazy ER doc (no knock on ER docs who really rock, just my personal experience) at about 3am to come "SEE" the patient with a bellyache for whom no radiographs, labs, or even vitals have been done before he calls you--it just LOOKED surgical, during your 2nd year its more of the same, during your 3rd year-you order around the 1st and 2nd years but still have to check behind them for everything bc if they make a mistake its always (but it was just his/her 1st year and you've been here... you shouldve forseen it... like the great fortune teller I'm trained to be), you do long clinic hours, you don't make near the amount of money you should for constant rectal exams everytime you see a patient (no matter what), you don't make near the amount of money for that 5 hour surgery that took 1.5 days to work up/2 days to resuscitate/ and will take about 10 days of hospital notes-late nite phone calls-etc/ and visits to your clinic 3 times a month/ and possibly 3 am ER visits just because they couldnt wait til morning for that sore back/and follow up over the next year because it never felt quite right after the surgery, you don't make near the money you should get to do a 3 vessel CABG which actually cost you an additional 2 years onto that 5 year residency program, your attendings constantly complain about how long they have to stay at work/how they hate having to chase after patients to get paid/how they are underpaid for what they do/ how most of them are divorced at least once/ how truly unhappy they seem deep down and you don't want to be like them after sacrificing 5 years to sit beside them and join in their complaining. Also, to look over the blue sheets at the anesthesiologist sitting comfortably in the chair as my feet/shoulders/neck/hips ached after a 4.5 hr surgery really irked me. Actually they were CRNAs, the anesthesiologists were all outside the OR front... drinking coffee, eating pastries, and talking trash. They seemed to be happy and talked openly about their families. I did realize that a lot MORE goes on behind the curtain, but it was SO worth it to make that switch even if I had to dust off my Pharmacology and Physiology texts. Don't get me wrong, there are rotten apples in every bunch, but anesthesiologists are typically very intelligent, efficient, friendly, and my type of person in general. I was compelled to switch from General Surgery to Anesthesiology because of these reasons among many others. Hope this helps you out a little.
