Thinking of Surgery

[MechEng2Doc]

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Hello all,

I have been shadowing a surgeon for a couple of days and it seems like a specialty that could be really appealing to me. I was just wondering how long surgeons normally practice, before they have to retire due to old age. I'll be 33 when I start med school (hopefully) and taking into consideration the long residency (and fellowship) needed for surgery I was wondering if it is a realistic specialty for me. So hypothetically speaking, if I finished a surgical residency at 42 (and a fellowship at 44) how long would my career last.

Thanks

 

[relentless11]

Hello all,

I have been shadowing a surgeon for a couple of days and it seems like a specialty that could be really appealing to me. I was just wondering how long surgeons normally practice, before they have to retire due to old age. I'll be 33 when I start med school (hopefully) and taking into consideration the long residency (and fellowship) needed for surgery I was wondering if it is a realistic specialty for me. So hypothetically speaking, if I finished a surgical residency at 42 (and a fellowship at 44) how long would my career last.

Thanks

Depends on your endurance and motivation. I believe there was one surgeon who was still operating at age 92. He invented some turbine like instrument to assist blood flow for people with CHF..

Conversely I have known some internists retire by age 65 due to stress. Hard to say, you are the one that knows yourself the best, but unless you can see the future...there may be many unpredictable things over the next 10 years. Not to mention there are many other hurdles to overcome in addition to getting into med school. For one, both internal medicine and surgery residencies are quite competative to get to. So I would probably place that on the back burner when you know your USMLE scores😉.

 

[RxnMan]

Read the Surgical Residency Forum on SDN (scroll down) and read some of the posts there.

 

[runningmom]

Hello all,

I have been shadowing a surgeon for a couple of days and it seems like a specialty that could be really appealing to me. I was just wondering how long surgeons normally practice, before they have to retire due to old age. I'll be 33 when I start med school (hopefully) and taking into consideration the long residency (and fellowship) needed for surgery I was wondering if it is a realistic specialty for me. So hypothetically speaking, if I finished a surgical residency at 42 (and a fellowship at 44) how long would my career last.

Thanks

I asked this question at one of my interviews because I was lucky enough to interview with an older (maybe mid60s? possibly even 70ish) surgeon. He ROCKED BTW - anyway - his response to my question of "how long can I still operate?" was great... he said (and I'll have to paraphrase here):
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I'll give you an easy to understand example in OB/GYN. As a young OB/GYN what do you do? ("Deliver babies" was my answer)
Yes, because you can stay up all night and still see patients the next day. You also can do oncologic surgeries while you are young because they are long, arduous surgeries. As you get a little older, you start doing mainly gyn surgery, hysterectomies and the like because they are scheduled and you know how long they are going to last. Then as you get older than that, you start leaning towards mainly in-office procedures. After that you do maintenance. (When I asked what that meant, he said - you know, like PAPS and breast exams).
*************
In short, his point was you can continue your practice as long as you want - you just change what you focus on.

So that's from someone who's been there... did I mention that he ROCKED!! 🙂 His was a great interview. He gave me lots to think about from that one.

 

[njbmd]

Hello all,

I have been shadowing a surgeon for a couple of days and it seems like a specialty that could be really appealing to me. I was just wondering how long surgeons normally practice, before they have to retire due to old age. I'll be 33 when I start med school (hopefully) and taking into consideration the long residency (and fellowship) needed for surgery I was wondering if it is a realistic specialty for me. So hypothetically speaking, if I finished a surgical residency at 42 (and a fellowship at 44) how long would my career last.

Thanks

Surgeons do not have to retire due to old age. There is no "forced" retirement in any medical specialty. One of my professors, Dr. Lasalle D. Leffall , Jr. graduated from medical school in 1952 and is still practicing full-time today. He was the first African-American president of the American Cancer Society back in 1978 and the first African-American president of the American College of Surgeons. Most of the practicing surgeons today who are fellows of the American College of Surgeons have his name on their fellowship certification. Dr. Leffall is a surgical oncologist.

Bottom line, your career can last as long as you last. If you are in good physical condition and mental condition you can practice as long as you wish to practice.

That being said, once you get into medical school and into your third-year surgical clerkship, you may find out that you don't want to do surgery at all. I saw plenty of my "surgery loving" classmates decide that they didn't want surgery after the clerkship and believe me, the clerkship is nothing compared to the residency.

 

[nitemagi]

There's a surgeon that's emeritus at my school that's 95 yo. The man's been diagnosing things since before they had CBC's. 😀

And he's awesome.