So if you had asked me last year how much I would be blogging during my 3rd year surgery rotation I would have told you, “About every 10 minutes, because its going to be so bloody awesome”. Now that I have finished week 5 of my 6 weeks of general surgery I realize how different the reality of my general surgery experience is. Below are some of the things I liked and disliked about doing general surgery:
LIKED
1. I get to wear scrubs for the majority of the day, which is great because I hate dressing up.
2. I get to go to the OR and if I’m lucky, scrub in, and if I’m lucking actually do something like throw in some sutures
3. I like the fact that when I go to evaluate a patient in the ER it is for a very specific surgical problem. Unlike medicine where my differential had to be expansive.
4. I like the clear cut problem solving of general surgeons…if appendix is inflamed we take it right out of the body. If gall bladder is inflamed, we take it right of the patient’s body.
5. Rounding on patients in the morning is pretty short. Is the wound looking good? Is the patient pooping, eating, walking? Good, then send them home.
6. Save lives. Hands down general surgeons save lives in most of the patients they deal with. If they don’t operate the patient often has a higher chance of dying. Its kind of cool in a sense to save lives everyday
DISLIKES
1. Subject matter. I absolutely…absolutely…absolutely hate a huge portion of what general surgeons operate on, which is the bowel and the rectum. I just can’t think of anywhere in the body that I detest the most. Hernias and gall bladders aren’t bad, but I loathe the bowel and it’s fecal treats and I hope to have nothing to do with it..ever.
2. Personalities. The general surgeons at the hospital I am at tend to be pretty wound up. Maybe its because if they aren’t absolutely wound up all the time then patients could die. Maybe its the stress of saving lives everyday, coupled with decreasing salaries. Or maybe they hate the bowel too…either way, they are often way too intense for me. Which is totally odd because before med school all the general surgeons I met seemed to be quite the opposite. Not intense at all, laid back, prone to smiling, etc.
3. Colotomies. I suppose that I could have lumped this together with subject matter, but I couldn’t because in particular I HATE HATE HATE colostomies. Sure they help save lives, but the nastiness they hold is detestable and seems like a cruel punishment to give a patient. I don’t like managing patients with colostomies and I don’t like even looking at the belly of patients with colostomies.
4. Call. for just about every trauma that comes into the ED, the general surgeons have to be there. Seems like a crazy life.
5. Variety. Maybe this is particular to the hospital I am at. But 95% of what I have seen they doing int he OR are laparoscopic cholecystecomies, laparoscopic appendectomies, thyroidectomies, and mastectomies. Pretty much it. I would like to work on a more wide variety of places on the body.
I am sure there are more dislikes that I just can’t think of now but they have been strong enough to make me completely cross out general surgery. So I have one more week of general surgery and then I switch to my specialty surgery weeks. I start off with 2 weeks of neurosurgery, and then I do 1 week of ortho, then 1 week of anesthesia, and then 1 week of urology, and end with 1 week of ophthomology. Pretty excited..weekends off…not poop or bowel…really happy.
Leave a Reply