bookiemom

I have learned quite a bit about general surgery residency as that is what my D is applying for right now. It's really hard as the residents and med students following them have to be in the hospital at five every day to start rounding. At her home hospital they do rounds and then have breakfast together to discuss cases.

At the gen surg residency at this hospital the residents have only four days off per month. Two days are together and then two other days off. It does sound brutal.

All the gen surg programs she applied to are five years. Then there is a one or two year fellowship after that, for plastics or breast surgery or vascular or trauma if you want to do that. (Some plastics and vascular are now integrated residencies, but the gen surg residency gives you more flexibility for future.)

eadad

The General Surgery program my S is in also has 4 days off per month. Since starting in July he has pretty much had a schedule of 15-16 days straight then a "golden weekend" of Sat and Sun off then back to 15-16 days straight. In between he has 4 or 5 days of night float. It's a pretty grueling schedule. Going in I thought his 4 days a month would be more spread out...1 every 7 or 8 days but in his case that's not how it has fallen. Every time we talk he sounds exhausted.

cbreeze

That's how we feel. My H is glad he is at the twilight of his career though he loves his job. Very few of our physician friends' kids are or plan to be in medicine and more daughters than sons are currently pursuing medicine.

bookiemom

Oh, eadad. That sounds SO hard. I wish my D were pursuing something easier. But we don't know if she will even match into general surgery. This is a hard phase because there is so much uncertainty even after 3 1/2 years of med school.

curmudgeon

I will be doing everything in my power to get mine to consider all other options. That truly sounds horrid. I didn't get to pick her path so far, but dang. I simply don't want "that" for her. Helicoptering a 25 year old? Yeah. Sue me. She can tell it to the shrink. I want her to enjoy all parts of a balanced life. Yuck .

limabeans

You know… if someone told me what it was "really" like to be an elementary-grade teacher (hours that can run from leaving the house at 6:45am, teaching all day (including supervising the students during lunch), preparing the room for the next day and lesson planning until 5:30pm, then grading papers for a few more hours, then emailing parents at midnight about the next day's writing prompt so they could talk about it at breakfast the next day….), well, I'd pause too. But then, I love teaching young kids. I love watching them master such minutia, like rounding numbers to 10s, or remembering the names of all the continents. I don't make a whole lot of money as a teacher, and the hours can be grueling, but I love it.

I sure hope our kids, soon to be medical doctors, love their career choice like I do. The hours may be grueling, but having a 'passion' for what you do can make it all worthwhile.

bookiemom

I hear you, curm. It's not what I would pick for my D either. Does your D listen to your opinion on things like this? I tried to not comment to my D too much on her choice of specialty, but it was very obvious how interested she was in surgery as soon as she started her 3rd year rotation. She also considered emergency and was encouraged by several drs. there, but as soon as she got back into surgery as a 4th year, the decision was made. She actually said to me after a complicated oncology surgery, "I love bowels!"
(That surgeon is writing one of her recommendation letters.)

curmudgeon

Yeah. Right. lol I won't win anyway. Just venting.

I am not as evolved as the rest of y'all. I am gonna say something.

somemom

Hey, we owe it to our kids to point out the pros & cons, then they can make an informed decision, but we all know they will make their own decisions. Perhaps all our girls can get together and start a supportive part time "have a life" surgical practice!

WayOutWestMom

Add my D to the list of girls encouraged to go into surgery. She's a "fix-it" type-A personality. She doesn't want to have long term or on-going relationships with her patients. Fix it and forget it could be her motto.

She loved her ER rotation this summer, but her mentor was an ortho as well as an EM specialist and he let her set a couple of broken arms. She enjoyed it. So now she's looking in to taking an ortho rotation during 4th year.

We've already talked about the negatives of a surgical specialty--including the awful hours and the long residency/fellowship period. I won't discourage her. (Yeah, like she'd listen to me anyway. She hasn't listened to me since she learned to say the word "no" at 8 months.) But I will make sure she knows what she's getting herself into.

DocT

My daughter said that one reason she likes neurology and surgery for that matter over family medicine which is her current rotation is that they are actually sick. A lot of the patients she has seen in family medicine aren't really sick and if they are sick with things like diabetes, they won't listen to you anyways. In surgery, you can have as much patient contact as you want or don't want.

mom2collegekids

But maybe I'm the crazy one who likes kids, families, stories, and sitting around talking to patients


Ahhh...you remind me of the internist that took care of my parents. He even came to their funerals.

WayOutWestMom

LOL!

Learned a new term this morning....Medical Students' Disease.

D1 says she has a bad case and apparently so do many of her classmates right about now....

kristin5792

Oh yeah. That one's awesome. They're worse than normal people who google things I swear. Our micro bio/infectious disease block was the worst, LOL.

hrh19

D was also encouraged, and she entertained it for quite some time as I recall, but in the end just couldn't see it for the rest of her working life. After reading all the comments here, I think it would have been hard for her, too. I am looking at her class match list from last March - five females matched in general surgery, one in orthopaedic surgery, and one in neurological surgery.
I think that is pretty common for many residencies from what I hear from my D and her friends. It seems that those in surgery have the longest days.