Really, What’s So Great About Surgery?

Hoover  26 Nov, 2007  Lifestyle

After taking a look at this thread, it really got me thinking again about why anyone would even consider a career in surgery.

I carried protein bars etc in my pockets and it came in handy. Surgery rotations were tough - I had to do 3 months, one of them over December. I had one day off - Christmas day - they paged me but I did not answer the page.

Carrying protein bars because you really don’t have time to eat and then getting paged on your only single day off — Christmas day, no less. What the fuck are people who want a lifetime of this really thinking?

I used to do my wash in shifts because I was too tired to stay up and put it in the dryer. It means having lots of easy to prepare food at home and never trying to run out of essentials: soap, TP, etc. because who wants to run out to the store when they get home after a really long day?

A career that doesn’t even allow you to complete basic day-to-day tasks such as washing clothes? I’ll pass, but thanks, anyway. Cutting on people can’t possibly be that good.

G-surg IS that bad at MANY places. I would know. Today is day 15. I broke 200 hours today. I’ve been in the hospital for no less than 10 hours of every day but one of the past 15. I got meal tickets on November 1st to cover breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the entire month of November. I should have used 31 of them. I’ve only used 20, and my team has ordered delivery for one of those missed meals. The day of my first short call I went from lunch to lunch the following day without eating anything because I was in the OR when the cafeteria closed for the night and I was back in the OR the next AM before it opened for the day. I usually get to pee, but only because there are bathrooms everywhere in this hospital.

Maybe this guy gets it. I sure as hell hope so since there are way too many idiots who seem to think surgery is God’s gift to medicine.

I get up at 4 every morning. Every fourth night I am required to work until 11, which really means working until 11, wrapping up the last few things and getting out at 11:30. Alternately it means getting pulled into the OR at 10:45 and being there until the case is finished. You are still expected back, on the floor, at 5 AM the next day no matter how late the case goes. If your fourth night falls on Friday or Saturday you stay until the following morning (usually around 10 AM). If it’s Sunday, you come in from 6 AM (yay, an extra hour of sleep!) until 11 PM.

Yep, I think he sees the light. One down, many more to go…

So Really, What’s So Great?

Finish up reading the thread and you’ll see pretty much the same — people complaining about their chosen field. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or even a neurosurgeon) to know what the hell you’re getting yourself into before matching into surgery.

I feel little sympathy for these guys. They rotated through surgery as a junior medical student and probably even did a Sub-I in surgery during their senior year. If that’s not enough to convince them that the lifestyle sucks, then maybe they’ll realize it when they burn out 5 years down the road and switch into Pathology.

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6 Comments so far »

  1. Superpig said

    November 26 2007 @ 1:12 am

    i laughed out loud upon reading that last line regarding the switch to pathology.

    general surgery sucks beyond belief. i finished my general surgery rotation recently and despite an overall cool team, i hated it SO MUCH. it really puzzles me how many people in med school, and even in residency, are so dishonest to themselves about how much they really hate something.

  2. Someonect said

    November 26 2007 @ 7:42 am

    i read this and remembered my experiences on general surgery as an intern (pre-80hr), but life is not like that after residency. most surgical residencies aren’t as bad as people complain about (but many are). an some people just like to complain to let people know how hard they work, especially in general surgery.

    do surgeons work hard? yes. is their life like a perpetual internship? no. the question you have to ask is, what do you want to do with the rest of your life? hoover, that is a point that you make many times throughout your posts. is it worth it? for me, it wasn’t as bad as i expected. but, i am not a complainer.

  3. bronx43 said

    November 26 2007 @ 5:19 pm

    Is this only representative of General Surgery or are all the specialty surgeries (ophthalmology, ENT, urology, etc) the same? I’m really interested in ENT, but if the six year residency is going to be hell, then I may have to look elsewhere.

  4. Hoover said

    November 26 2007 @ 8:46 pm

    It’s more GSurg focused — I don’t know a whole lot about the ENT lifestyle. However, it’s a surgical subspecialty so I’m sure it isn’t the most lifestyle-friendly specialty.

  5. dude said

    January 24 2008 @ 9:21 pm

    subspecialties are vastly, VASTLY better lifestyles (generally speaking…. of courses there are certainly subspecialty programs that abuse their residents, too).

  6. some med student said

    October 22 2008 @ 12:25 am

    What confuses me is parents that push their kids into medicine and even further surgery. I chose medicine on my own and have picked a specialty I have fallen in love with. My parents played no role in my career choice, but yes, there was nothing else in the world they wanted more than for me to be a doctor. Neither are physicians, neither even work in healthcare, but from their encounters with physicians in clinics, they got the impression that doctors make big dollars by ripping people off with a slip of their pen on prescription pads. So they want their daughter to be like that as well despite the fact that they have been very unhappy with their own healthcare services…

    I just don’t understand parents that try to push their children into careers that they know nothing about and completely based on their own speculation. I’m glad I love medicine, but the training has thus far taken a huge toll. And surgery on top of that! I commend people that do it for humanitarian reasons because the world does need them. But my father…well, he thinks surgery is a easy road to fancy cars and bling. He keeps trying to hook me up with surgeons overseas to get practice cutting, he thinks all surgeons do is cut. Far from the truth!! Now my parents complain that I’m never available and I don’t call on a daily basis with medical advice for them (I’m a third year on surgery right now). They attribute this to laziness on my part…Well excuse me but I have not slept in 30 hours, I wake up at 4am daily asking about flatulence from total strangers, and have to study for the shelf… Whenever I try to explain to my dad that surgery can offer a tough lifestyle as verified by some attendings, his response is that surgeons get overpaid and had life so easy that they became spoiled and have nothing better to do than complain! wtf?!

    Both my parents are unhappy with the specialty I have settled on and hope I become a surgeon one day. I love the specialty I’ve decided on, I’ve rotated through it, attendings say I rock at it, and it offers a superb lifestyle for time for a family. Surgery probably works great for some. But seriously why the hell would I want to pursue it?!?! The hours for me are long, the material just does not stick for me, I can’t suture worth crap, I have butter fingers to top it off too =/.

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