Why you should go into surgery

Applying to Med School? Get In Or Your Money Back
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mimelim

mimelim

Vascular Surgery
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When bored on Saturdays...

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Da Vinci Robots... Jailbroken!
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Haiduken-oscopy!
 
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This is the best SDN post I've ever seen.
 
I expect this to become a "Your tax dollars/Obamacare at work" post on a social media website, eventually.

:thumbup:
 
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Surgery is cool except for the 80-100 hour work weeks.
 
circulus vitios said:
Surgery is cool except for the 80-100 hour work weeks.
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You probably won't work nearly that many hours post-residency as a surgeon. The average is much closer to 60 for just about every surgical specialty per AAMC (they report national averages without ranges on the aamc.org/cim website which you gain access to once you start medical school, I think). Vascular is on the high end at around 70.
 
sinombre said:
You probably won't work nearly that many hours post-residency as a surgeon. The average is much closer to 60 for just about every surgical specialty per AAMC (they report national averages without ranges on the aamc.org/cim website which you gain access to once you start medical school, I think). Vascular is on the high end at around 70.
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Yeah, but 5+ years of working '80 hours' (probably closer to 100 after you lie about your hours to keep it within the rules) during residency is god awful.
 
:O

Hmm...maybe surgery isn't so bad after all all!

So...were you the dude on the left or right? :p
 
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southernIM said:
Looks like 1-2 residents who should be going home to me...
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They say those surgeons who play video games perform better in surgery. This is some next level meta medical integration.
 
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circulus vitios said:
Yeah, but 5+ years of working '80 hours' (probably closer to 100 after you lie about your hours to keep it within the rules) during residency is god awful.
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It's all good, brah. Let the hard workers do the best specialties.
 
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circulus vitios said:
Yeah, but 5+ years of working '80 hours' (probably closer to 100 after you lie about your hours to keep it within the rules) during residency is god awful.
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I think you're overestimating the prevalence of this.
Admittedly, I'm going into a surgical subspecialty and not gen-surg, but I haven't encountered a program where working "closer to 100" hours for 5+ years is the standard, even at the places I've rotated/interviewed that aren't compliant.

But it's all relative I guess. X hours (60 or 70 or whatever) a week on peds or medicine or whatever was my definition of god awful as a third year.
 
Ok2Panic said:
I think you're overestimating the prevalence of this.
Admittedly, I'm going into a surgical subspecialty and not gen-surg, but I haven't encountered a program where working "closer to 100" hours for 5+ years is the standard, even at the places I've rotated/interviewed that aren't compliant.
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I haven't seen many people who lie about hours per week they work, but I have seen a few who break duty hours in other ways... Doing patient care for longer than 24 hours straight or something of that nature. They make break 100 hours for that week, but it generally averages out to 80ish in the long run.
 
Omppu27 said:
80-100 work weeks are worth it if you get to have surg written on your white coat and walk around like a straight-up hotshot.
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Careful, some starry-eyed premed is gonna take your post seriously.
 
Omppu27 said:
80-100 work weeks are worth it if you get to have surg written on your white coat and walk around like a straight-up hotshot.
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Then you walk out of the hospital and into the real world, and nobody cares.
 
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circulus vitios said:
Then you walk out of the hospital and into the real world, and nobody cares.
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You mean I can't go to a bar, drop the "I'm a surgeon" bomb, and instantly have all 10s on your arms?

Well there goes my answer to "Why [surgical specialty]?" in residency interviews. ****.
 
PreMedOrDead said:
You mean I can't go to a bar, drop the "I'm a surgeon" bomb, and instantly have all 10s on your arms?

Well there goes my answer to "Why [surgical specialty]?" in residency interviews. ****.
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Strong everything. lol @ ure location, username, mdapp, .
 
Surgeons aren't the only female magnets. In fact, if we had to rank it, I'd say Emergency Physicians come in a close second, and as long as you're not a Psychiatrist, I think being any type of physician appeals to the ladies quite nicely. My apologies to the mental health field, but most women don't like the idea of being psychoanalyzed.
 
Odo ti Aye said:
Surgeons aren't the only female magnets. In fact, if we had to rank it, I'd say Emergency Physicians come in a close second, and as long as you're not a Psychiatrist, I think being any type of physician appeals to the ladies quite nicely. My apologies to the mental health field, but most women don't like the idea of being psychoanalyzed.
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As a male, tell us more about what women want please.
 
Odo ti Aye said:
Surgeons aren't the only female magnets. In fact, if we had to rank it, I'd say Emergency Physicians come in a close second, and as long as you're not a Psychiatrist, I think being any type of physician appeals to the ladies quite nicely. My apologies to the mental health field, but most women don't like the idea of being psychoanalyzed.
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Just being nitpicky, but psychiatrist don't do psychoanalysis....nor do psychologists.
 
NontradCA said:
As a male, tell us more about what women want please.
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I'm just speaking from experience, both personal and observed. Do women not like to know their man works hard, provides them security, and doesn't over-analyze them? Your remark embodies the prototypical snobbery rampant among medical students. And on top of that you're one of those humanistic DOs! Well done, but keep it off the floors please.
 
WillburCobb said:
Just being nitpicky, but psychiatrist don't do psychoanalysis....nor do psychologists.
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Technically true, although I did follow a psych doc for a few days who was pretty Freudian and did do some of what he termed psychoanalysis. He was considered somewhat of an odd duck by his colleagues.
 
Surgery? Administration is where it's at.
 
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Odo ti Aye said:
I'm just speaking from experience, both personal and observed. Do women not like to know their man works hard, provides them security, and doesn't over-analyze them? Your remark embodies the prototypical snobbery rampant among medical students. And on top of that you're one of those humanistic DOs! Well done, but keep it off the floors please.
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As long as you keep your tact.
 
PreMedOrDead said:
You mean I can't go to a bar, drop the "I'm a surgeon" bomb, and instantly have all 10s on your arms?
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I think if you follow it up with "and that's my Enzo outside", the chicks will come running.

Trust me.:thumbup:
 
mvenus929 said:
I haven't seen many people who lie about hours per week they work, but I have seen a few who break duty hours in other ways... Doing patient care for longer than 24 hours straight or something of that nature. They make break 100 hours for that week, but it generally averages out to 80ish in the long run.
Click to expand...

I think most of the rules have been broken at times at many (most) programs, whether or not the residents ever let the programs know about it. Residents make deals with eachother to get off this weekend or that weekend all the time, and sometimes it's just worth it to blow through your duty hours to get an extra golden weekend to attend a friends wedding, go on an interview, etc. Similarly the number of night float nights in a row rule probably gets cast side when people want to make trades to free up other times. Or the one day off in seven.

Also many programs label residents as "inefficient" if their duty hour time sheet totals exceed the 80 hour limits and residents quickly learn to avoid the label and hand in sheets that just happen to add up to 80 hours or less. Always. True or not. I would point out that an 80 hour work week seem like a ton as a premed/med student, but if you are doing 6 night in a row of 13 hour shifts, that's already 78 hours on paper to start with, so it doesn't take much to push you over your limit each week. A half hour here, twenty minutes there...

And yes, it's often hard to get out of there exactly at the 24 hour mark, particularly if one of your teams patients starts to code before you give your sign out, or the guy you re supposed to sign out to has car trouble, or maybe there's a cool lecture that morning you want to stay on for, or some task you wouldnt want dumped on you at the start of your shift, so you can't bring yourself to dump it on someone else in your team. Even when the limit was thirty hours people broke this rule.

I'd say all of the rules have likely at times been broken, usually voluntarilly by the resident, and usually the program never knows about it. They remain blissfully ignorant, knowing the work is getting done and the time sheets they submit to the ACGME all show compliance.
 
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sinombre said:
You probably won't work nearly that many hours post-residency as a surgeon. The average is much closer to 60 for just about every surgical specialty per AAMC (they report national averages without ranges on the aamc.org/cim website which you gain access to once you start medical school, I think). Vascular is on the high end at around 70.
Click to expand...

Actually many of my friends who finished surgery programs saw their hours jump up markedly when they started as an attending. They were low man on the totem pole so they got a lions share of their practices call. And, most significantly, you don't get a post call day as an attending -- if you were up all night doing cases, you still have come to (or stay at) work the next day. The vascular surgeons I know usually blow past 70 hours by Wednesday of each week -- The averages You are seeing are likely pulled down by semi-retired and part time type schedules you won't ever have, or self employed people doing a few hours of pseudo-surgery cosmetic procedures a week (varicose vein ablations and Botox).

I'm not saying you can't get to a reasonable schedule down the road, I'm saying don't kid yourself into thinking that residency is going to be the worst of it. It's not - wherever you go afterwards you are going to be expected to "pay your dues". You get a skewed view as a med student -- you assume the attending you see leaving at 5 each day is going home, while really he's going to round on patients at another hospital, or he's going to have dinner with his kids before coming back to the hospital. It's just not a get through X years of residency and I can kick back kind of field.
 
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