Saturday, August 30, 2008

Surgery

I am starting surgery at Cook County on Tuesday. Cook County is a huge hospital that mostly serves the inner city of Chicago. The TV show ER is based (very far from reality) on the Cook County Emergency department. 

In medical school the surgery rotation is often considered to be one of the hardest if no the hardest rotation of all. The hours are long and often the people you work with are not the most pleasant. There are all kinds of horror stories going around about different experiences that students have had while on surgery. Much of these experiences are location and person specific. If you work with a surgeon who is a jerk you are going to have more horrific stories than if you work with a surgeon who is human. 

You can bet that you will be yelled at and told that you are an idiot at some point during your rotation. The hours will be long and tiring and most people either love it or hate it. I am approaching this rotation with an open mind and I am very excited to see if this is a field I could see myself doing for the rest of my life. As I entered medical school I always thought that surgery may be one of my options and I still think that it may but I have never wanted to fully commit or reject the notion of being a surgeon until I had experienced a surgical rotation. This is why I have chosen to do my surgery rotation early in the year. If I love it then I can further pursue it as a career or choice and if I hate it I can erase it from my options. 

I am excited to learn and see all the different procedures. 

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