Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Dr. Orthochick: Confession

I would like to take this opportunity to make a confession:

After my third year med school general surgery rotation we had to take a skills test that involved doing a horizontal mattress suture, a vertical mattress suture, and a couple of hand-tied knots....

Not only could I not do any of that, but I started crying while attempting to tie a knot and the woman in the room who was precepting told me to stop, hugged me, and then told me to try again, sweetie.

I really feel like that should have prevented me from becoming a surgeon, not because I couldn't do it, but because i started crying and quit.

(If I pulled that now, I think I'd get kicked out of residency and they'd be right to do so.)

3 comments:

  1. This nicely illustrates that not all aspects of medical training are cutthroat. I can count on less-than-one hand the number of times someone treated me poorly during med school/residency, but I've lost track of how many residents and attendings were kind to me over the years.

    Also shows the huge difference that a few years of training can make. Aspects of life that once fazed us don't even register now.

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  2. You can do it now, though. Right?

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  3. I'd rather have a surgeon like that, who acts like a human being. Med school nails everyone at some point. Practice does too. Its the ones who don't feel anything that you need to worry more over.

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