Surgery Recap

So i completed my 3rd year surgery rotation. All 12 weeks plus my shelf exam this past monday, which went surprisingly ok.



Surgery started rough. I went in thinking I would hate the surgical experience for many reasons. I'm a slacker. So, the stories of the long 12-40 hour days scared me, and the overnight trauma calls with nasty interns all turned me off before i even started to consider if i would like the actual surgeries themselves.

For the first 1.5 weeks i avoided the OR, and didn't care what the attendings thought of me, since I was just going for the 'Pass' for this rotation. However, my first rotation was the trauma service, and we had weekly meetings with Dr Shaftan, the surgeon who invented the trauma service...no joke. I loved getting trauma pages because it was a rush to be the first medical team to get to a patient after EMS, and to go through the best research protocols in terms of resuscitation, and deciding what needs to be done for every suspicious we had. And when we finally went to the OR for one of my earlier traumas, I loved it.

Then I started to check out the bread & butter surgeries as I transitioned to General Surgery. Hernia repairs and lap choles took time, but they slowly grew on me. Vascular surgery is still 'meh' to me, but neuro surgery seems awesome, but still competitive with a terrible lifestyle. Plastics is def not for me, ortho is not for me, and urology and colorectal were definite turn-offs. Gastric bypasses and bariatric surgery is really interesting with the new stuff coming out, and i actually probably like trauma and general surgery the most right now. ENT was ok, but not all that great. SICU was insanely annoying.

Surgery is a good field if you like the idea of mechanically fixing the human body. Something is stuck in your small bowel? medical treament fails? lets goto the OR and fix it. Your gall bladder or appendix is inflammed and is endangering your life? Lets go to the OR and take it out. Your obesity is going to kill you in a matter of years if you dont lose weight? lets do a gastric bypass and make you lose weight but re-working the design of your gut. You got crushed in a car accident, bones are broken, arteries are slashed, organs are bleeding? lets fix you up in the OR. much respect.

Now i have to see how much i like medicine, but so far i like surgery a lot.

Now that I'm into my first week of Family Medicine. I am INSANELY BORED. OMG Family doctors take care of the most boring cases ever, IMO, compared to surgery. I hate it. There are barely any procedures to do, and everything is so minor. Everything sometimg big/serious does come up, you just send them to the ER, and let the hospital specialists take care of it. SIGH. i can't do it. I need to study my butt off so I can avoid Family and become a surgeon or EM doc, or at least a medicine doc.

well we'll see I guess. However, i'm pretty sure I hate family medicine. after this its OB/Gyn, and at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if i hate family more than ob/gyn, taking into account i'm expecting to feel ob/gyn is hell on earth, just because every intern and resident in ob/gyn just seems chronically angry and mean. At least the babies are cool.

-john