A Day in the Life of a Trauma Surgeon

[K1malek]

Sorry if this topic has been posted before, but I was interested in what a day for a Trauma Surgeon would be like(Such as hours, what to expect, etc).


I have been interested in this career for the past year or so and I just want to get a clear idea of what it would be like. I have searched google for this answer, but I just get the generic "A trauma surgeon does this..." and nothing really about things such as hours, vacation time, etc.

Also, as a side question, how is the pre-med program at the University of San Francisco. I'm thinking of pursuing a biology degree either there, at UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, or Cal State Long Beach.


Thanks.

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[LHS Student]

There is a show on the discovery health channel called trauma: life in the ER, each episode follows a set of doctors and their patients. These episodes are from the late 90's or early 2000's so I can't tell you if anything has changed since then. Part of the show the doctors do say a little bit about their personal experiences as a trauma surgeon or ER physician. This specialty seems to have long streneous hours and being very stressful, but some love it! You must be able to think fast on your feet because a majority of your patients(depending on the hospital/location) have been involved in a near death experience. Take everything I have said with a grain of salt because this is only what I have read/observed.
Hope I have helped a little!

 

[chrslbrt]

Here's a link from an article that details a couple of days of the life of an ER physician.

http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070531/CUSTOM02/70525004/1018/NEWS02

Also, like the poster above said, you can look at Discovery Health to see shows like 'Trauma: Life in the ER' and others that are similar.

I read that emergency medicine physicians have a pretty rigid schedule, in the sense that they don't have many calls, because they do shift work. That is the reason many people have chosen emergency medicine. However, I cannot speak for trauma surgeons, who most likely have more hours and a worse on-call schedule than their non-surgical ER counterparts.

 

[K1malek]

Thanks for the info about the show I'll definitely check them out.

Luckily I am quick on my feet and I enjoy working under pressure. So hopefully this career path is the right for me.

 

[Bacchus]

Trauma surgery is not shift work. It is not like the typical ER doc. You can't leave because your shift's over when you're elbow deep in an abdomen fixing an aortic dissection that burst. A bit dramatic, I know, and the person would probably not survive, but you get the point. To do trauma surgery, to the best of my knowledge, you must complete a general surgery residency (5 years) and then do a fellowship in trauma surgery.

You can look here: http://www.trauma.org/archive/resources/fellowships/fellowships.html to learn more about the fellowship programs.

A regular ER doc will do a 3 year residency.

 

[GoodmanBrown]

Thanks for the info about the show I'll definitely check them out.

Luckily I am quick on my feet and I enjoy working under pressure. So hopefully this career path is the right for me.

I think you'll find a fair number of residents and attendings who aren't big fans of trauma. I don't think the pay is much higher because your patient population is often poorer than a standard general surgeon's patient base.

Lifestyle is fairly bad as you take tons of call and do your surgeries late at night when people are getting shot, stabbed, and in car accidents.

Search "trauma" in the general surgery forum for a number of jaded posts. Here's a typical one.

 

[orthomyxo]

I think you'll find a fair number of residents and attendings who aren't big fans of trauma. I don't think the pay is much higher because your patient population is often poorer than a standard general surgeon's patient base.

Lifestyle is fairly bad as you take tons of call and do your surgeries late at night when people are getting shot, stabbed, and in car accidents.

Search "trauma" in the general surgery forum for a number of jaded posts. Here's a typical one.

This. Trauma surgery definitely isn't a 9-5 job.

 

[psipsina]

80% of trauma cases are just broken leg and arm bones. Put a cast, give a prescription and the person goes home. The times I did call in a Trauma hospital, it was actually rare to find someone real bad and adrenaline at 100% power.

In a non trauma hospital like the one I worked at last year, the job is even more.. monotomous. Kids with common colds, diabetics that ran out of their meds and abdominal pain (usually irritable bowel disease or gallbladder stone pain) are the most common consults. You rarely saw dramatic stuff like what they show on those tv shows. Some of the residents in that Trauma ER show on Discovery acts dumber than many med students (as in, they looks like newbies that havn't been around much ot that they don't know anything). if they were residents in a mexican hospital they'd be grounded with 300 hour long shifts nonstop half of the time.

There is definitely a difference between hospitals and between trauma surgery vs emergency medicine.

I just finished a 6 week rotation on a trauma surgery service at a level 1 trauma center (where the bad traumas go, was filmed for parts of that trauma show on discovery health). We have a very high proportion of penetrating trauma and we regularly got multiple gunshot wounds on each call shift (24 hours) with a smattering of stabbings, motor vehicle accidents, burns, appendicitis, cholecystitis, pancreatitits etc. I rarely got more than 2-3 hours of sleep on a ~32 hour shift (and that was with the residents letting me sleep thru boring stuff and go home earlier than they did) and got no sleep at all on multiple occasions. The residents were on call 2-3 times per week. The attending trauma surgeon was by our side at 3 am when the burn victim rolled in so their hours are just as bad. You have to truly love it to be ok with your pager blowing up at 3am and rolling to the OR with a case. The outcomes are relatively poor compared to some other surgical specialties which is also a consideration. It certainly isn't a "lifestyle specialty", but in my opinion its alot of fun.

 

[Bacchus]

Like psipsina said, vasca, there is a distinuishing line of trauma vs. emergency medicine in the states. An orthopedist often will be called to consult on those "80% of cases" or the staff physician will take it on his own. A trauma surgeon would not be consulted and a trauma code would not be called for a broken bone, unless it was immediate, life-threatening.

 

[45408]

80% of trauma cases are just broken leg and arm bones. Put a cast, give a prescription and the person goes home. The times I did call in a Trauma hospital, it was actually rare to find someone real bad and adrenaline at 100% power.

In a non trauma hospital like the one I worked at last year, the job is even more.. monotomous. Kids with common colds, diabetics that ran out of their meds and abdominal pain (usually irritable bowel disease or gallbladder stone pain) are the most common consults. You rarely saw dramatic stuff like what they show on those tv shows. Some of the residents in that Trauma ER show on Discovery acts dumber than many med students (as in, they looks like newbies that havn't been around much ot that they don't know anything). if they were residents in a mexican hospital they'd be grounded with 300 hour long shifts nonstop half of the time.

As is often the case, this is not an accurate depiction of what's it like in the US.

 

[KD1655]

While I am not a trauma surgeon, I worked as an EMT for a large, academic medical center that handled emergency response for a very densely populated and very violent urban area. In this medical center, any patient that is backboarded is treated as a trauma patient and seen in the dedicated trauma ED. To that end, a suburban soccer mom involved in a low speed fender-bend while heading home and complaining of mild neck and back pain could be sharing a trauma bay with a gang banger shot multiple times by "his boy" over something as stupid as a dime bag of dope. I always admired the work of the trauma surgeons in this situation because they had to quickly change their attitudes and demeanor when dealing with different patients in close spatial proximity. For those of you that have never worked EMS or in a urban ER, the way that you are viewed and the amount of respect that you receive as a healthcare provider varies vastly based on the patient. In my experience, the soccer moms obviously treat you with alot more respect and cooperation (most of the time) than the banger who tells you to go **** your mother when you ask him his name. Obviously, the level of respect that you show each of these patients will vary, even if its subconsciously. My attitude has always been to show every patient the utmost respect until they give me a reason not to and even when they give you a reason not to, I just simply refuse to engage the patient in confrontation. In that respect, ER docs, trauma surgeons, EMTs, and paramedics are on the front lines of medicine. Another situation for which I greatly admire the work of trauma surgeons is their composition during pediatric trauma codes. All pediatric codes are dramatic but I have noticed that trauma codes are especially dramatic and difficult and I have yet to see a trauma surgeon falther under such a situation. I have always imagined how difficult it is for the ER doc or the trauma surgeon to pronounce the infant/child after we bring them into the ER and after working them up to the point of exhaustion in the field; to know that we had failed when the doc pronounced is very difficult. In fact, it was a pediatric trauma patient that coded in my arms that eventually drove me out of urban EMS and made me concentrate more on research. For the surgeon or ER doc, it must be difficult to order resuscitation efforts to cease and essentially condemn any minute chance that the patient has of survival. Again, just my opinion but ER docs and trauma surgeons have some of the toughest jobs in medicine. To think that EMTs and paramedics often have to deal with the same level of stress and often see the most severe patients before a physician and that they are only paid $10/ hr in some states should make you raise an eyebrow.

 

[RanchoEMT]

$10.75 after 4 years as an EMT.

 

[europeman]

I know this thread is a bit old but I've been an attending trauma surgeon and intensivist for a couple years now and it's great. I work in an inner city busy hospital. Life style is great in that I only work hard when I'm at work. Our team is great and we get each other out early - we do not routinely stay post call and when we are scheduled to work a night shift we don't start work until 4pm. I'm at work or doing work related things between 40-50 hours a week.