This disappoints me on many levels.
Several of us attendings and senior residents have tried to show the SDN community that surgeons don't have to be *******s and the work can be enjoyable, despite the conventional wisdom here. You've now just proven their point with your arrogant, misinformed post.
Thanks. Really.
A couple of thoughts:
1) Stop whining, do your job. If you get yelled at, do it better. It isn't that complicated, I suspect that if you took an average surgery intern and snuck them in as an M3 on a surgery rotation they'd nearly never get yelled at. Why is this? They show insight as to what the expectations are, respect for the system, and understanding of what needs to get done. Take some responsibility for your own situation and make it better.
Unless someone is dying and the student is actively trying to hasten that, there really is no room for yelling. People that yell at students and colleagues do so because they have failed to learn the appropriate way to communicate as an adult. There is a reason why children have temper tantrums. They do not have the vocabulary and emotional control to have a rational discussion about their wants and needs. The same is true for adults who treat others this way.
To compare a surgical intern to an MS-3 makes no sense. Of course they have insight into what the expectations are and do a better job.
JOB. It is not the student's job to "get things done". They are not there to do your work or to make your life easier. They are there to learn. It is your job to provide the expectations to the students and provide the opportunity for them to meet those expectations. A student who does poorly on a rotation generally does so because the expectations have not been clearly set, not because they don't care. Does learning during clinical years also include taking care of patients (ie, not just reading in the library)? Of course it does and the students do have a responsibility to see that their educational goals are being met and be responsible for that, but as a resident in a teaching program, you also have a responsibility to help them with that.
2) The system is what it is. You may hate it, I may hate it. Nonetheless, it's been that way for over a century and, despite having some of the best minds involved, has not created a better system. Clearly, if it were that horrible and dysfunctional somewhere along the way it would have broken down and changed in to something better.
You are showing your ignorance here. The system HAS changed. The Halstead manner of training where residents lived in the hospital no longer exists. Work hour restrictions have existed outside of NYC since 2003; even in NSGY programs with exceptions to 88 hours/week. Surgeons who throw temper tantrums, abuse staff and throw instruments are no longer tolerated and may actually face loss of hospital privileges.
The system was horrible and dysfunctional and your defense of yelling at students represents the old guard. I worked q2 rotations and over 120 hours per week. I got into a car accident on the way home post call because I fell asleep at the wheel driving home. I saw orders written which made no sense or where the writing was completely illegible. Do I defend long hours in the hospital as a trainee? Absolutely. If you're not there, you miss things. But those 120 hours, those days of staying 36, 42, etc. hours post call were not educational. I wasn't operating, taking care of patients and actively learning for much of those hours. A lot of the time I was sitting in the call room waiting for the Chief to be done with his fem-distal so I could sign out post call. There was no benefit to that then and there certainly isn't any justification for it now. Is 80 hours enough? I don't know, but to claim that the system hasn't changed is just flat out wrong.
I don't know what the solution is but there are PLENTY of people within surgical academia who recognize that the old ways were not the best and that while we face a dilemma on how to effectively train surgeons in the day of reduced work hours, they are willing to figure a way to do so.
To simply say "that's the way it is and you'll like it" is a cop out. I said the same thing when I was a resident. Almost all of us did, because we didn't know any better and perhaps we had attendings whom we looked up to who made us believe those things.
We can and will do better as a profession. If we don't change, we will continue to lose the best and the brightest of medical students to other fields and our field will be lost to midlevel encroachment when we can no longer staff ORs and clinics. So we HAVE to change.
3) Different personalities and interests relate to and are interested in different fields. You may be a touchy-feely-care-bear type, congratulations - you have pediatrics. You may love rounding ad naseum and debating FeNa or CrCl, congratulations - you have GIM. It's disrespectful and just as arrogant as you are accusing the surgeons of being if you don't even try to consider their field and give it an honest effort.
Yes, many of the posters in this thread have been disrespect to surgeons and the field. However, your marginalization of other specialties here is just as bad and disrepsectful. We are all on the same team and while we can joke about the differences, there is no room to be arrogant and disrespectful of the choices others make.
So again, thank you for proving their point. I suggest you reread what you've written in a few years and come back and see how your attitude about training and your colleages in other specialties has changed. And I encourage you to join the forces to FIND a way to change surgical training so as to attract more students. It starts way before MS-3; pre-meds read threads like this and make up their minds that surgery is not for them because of the blatant unpleasant attitudes.
) I recognize that there is a surgical mentality and although you can't be "too nice to be a surgeon", you do have to possess certain attributes.
