Why Panda Bear won’t go into surgery:
It’s part of their culture to treat each other disrespectfully during training. Whether this is necessary to train a surgeon cannot be known. It’s just the way the system has evolved and it seems to be structured to keep residents perpetually tired and irritated at everyone and everything.
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- An incredible surgery, but would future surgeons be able to accomplish the same feat?
- Can you deal with emergency medicine?
- Online cardiac surgery simulations for aspiring heart surgeons
- Surgeons and their bodies
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Trust me, the behavior continues into private practice. All we do is butt heads all day in my surgical group. The level of egocentricity is likely found in other competitive careers. I still am astonished at the absence of respect for other group members, and the lack of leadership, exhibited. There is no matter or amount too small to argue about. If you do not stand up for yourself and your interests, you will be steamrolled and nobody will care. The culture is piss on me, piss on you in perpetual motion.
I don’t believe that behavior is confined to the surgical subspecialties. I just think they are most honest and upfront about it, compared to the backstabbing and fake smiles that I’ve seen in medicine training and practice.
b
Hey b:
How is fellowship?
Fellowship is easier than private practice by far and I can see how the actual job will be easier than most. Sometimes at night I will rant to the wife about how unfair it is that the oncologists have to make one or two decisions about a patient and spend 10 minutes in the room when I used to have to make 5-6 decisions about a patient for the “office visit” and spend more time for much less money. She keeps trying to tell me I’m not doing that anymore, but it still make me angry because it doesn’t seem fair.
The only problem is that the subspecialists think they know general medicine outside of their specialty and I’ve had to make the decision either to challenge them about stupid stuff (uh, you shouldn’t treat BPPV with high dose steroids sir) or just keep my mouth shut for the sake of avoiding confrontation. It is hard for me to do the latter.
If you have the chance, leave and do fellowship. It is more money for less work. I promise you.
b
I avoided surgery because the residency culture at my school was so f**King mean! Not just competetive, but plain mean.
But I think that I would have been good at the work and think now that I ought to at least have given serious consideration to looking around for a saner program–but that was all I knew then. I rotated through surgery at the school where I later interned and there was a little of that but not 25% of what it was where I went to school.
I see in the community surgeons who never bought into that and cluster together and treat each other (and patients) like gentlemen. Others still think meanness is the mark of a good surgeon, but once out of residency, they are avoidable I think. Don’t let that alone stop you. There is a world beyond med school.
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