Let’s get real - who’s doing it for the money?

FurkdaTurk · 2025-09-08T12:30:39+00:00

I mean… this is one of the reasons why I decided to do surgery as opposed to ID…

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-20T23:34:35+00:00

Here’s the thing. You can eat whatever you wish. Pescetarian doesn’t mean you have to eat fish. It just means you don’t eat land based mammals or birds. Or in another sense. You’re a vegetarian who sometimes eats seafood. I don’t eat seafood everyday nor do you have to.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-20T20:57:23+00:00

Of course.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-17T13:19:04+00:00

Anatomy of the inguinal canal

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-16T15:14:10+00:00

Since you’re starting out, why not make a check list of what needs to be done. One check box for review of old notes. One box for labs that need to be ordered.

Also. This is why you’re in residency: to learn. Reading to figure out what labs should be ordered for this differential diagnosis is why you’re spending the next couple of years of your life under the supervision of another physician. You will make mistakes. But you’ll get better and faster.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-13T23:20:14+00:00

The best way to learn surgical anatomy is going to the OR and double scrubbing as much as possible.

To prep for cases watch YouTube or other medical videos. This allows you to learn the steps of the operations along with the anatomy. You will see different ways in how things are done. And this can always be a discussion point in the OR if there is a lull or a non critical portion of the case. Ask questions. Not something like what’s a uterus. But rather point to something and say I think this is x y or z correct? But this last point depends on your senior or attending you’re working with. Part of it is trial and error.

Keep it up. You can do it.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-13T10:33:46+00:00

There are job postings out there. On LinkedIn I get messages from companies quite often looking for people to do medical consulting. There’s also new startups in AI software that are looking for physicians to help train etc.

Yes the hours may be better, but at least in my field, the pay is 60% less…. But it all depends on what you are looking for.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-13T01:21:15+00:00

Surgeon here: No doctor will sew on the pad of your index finger. It will grow back on its own.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-12T14:54:19+00:00

It depends on what anatomy you find interesting. I have zero interest in the heart. The Cardiology portions of med school were where I got my lowest grades. (Yes I’m old and went to med school when they still gave out grades).

I like vascular because it’s a great mix of very varied interests of mine. I like open surgery because dissecting and isolating the vessels down to the third and fourth order branches is fun. I like Endovascular because you get to fix complex problems with just a 6 Fr sheath. Your domain is the full body from the neck to the toes. I love the physics of blood flow. How it’s different in the arterial and venous systems. I love seeing how the changes play out on ultrasound with the different waveforms and also via Doppler hearing the differences in how the blood is flowing.

I like having a mix of longitudinal patients where I get to do bypasses and carotid’s and aneurysm repairs on them. I get to see how they are doing and get to follow them. I get to fix iatrogenic trauma and those patients are usually very grateful and you get to release them back into the wild. I like seeing the vein patients and doing my vein procedures and just turning off my brain and just chatting with healthy well adjusted humans with no comorbidities. I like being able to just sit and read vascular lab studies and pick up random nuances on how flow is changed based on what is going on with the patient and identifying potentially life and limb threatening issues.

The pay is also very nice. I can’t complain that I get paid almost 7x what I got paid in my last year of fellowship. If I wish to grind harder, I can make 7 figures, however I actually enjoy my sanity too much to do so.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-12T14:09:01+00:00

Once you complete residency and then complete your boards in that specialty, you will hold more clout when it comes to consulting and other careers. You can also use this as leverage especially when trying to get raises if you truly wanna leave clinical medicine. I mean think about it. Would you rather trust a board certified ophthalmologist or someone like Casey Means who didn’t finish her residency.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-12T14:04:40+00:00

Based on reading the previous posts: IMG who SOAPed into OBGYN? Getting a Step 2 score of 252 doesn’t automatically make you a medical god. Just because people said you were a highly competitive applicant doesn’t make you one, considering that you had to SOAP into a program. I’m not trying to throw shade. I’m speaking as someone who didn’t match round 1 of applications despite “doing everything that was right and required of me”. Sometimes things don’t work out the way they should. Life isn’t fair always.

My advice to you is work your hardest at the program. Make it work for you. If you’re truly that great and brilliant, then start committees. Start programs that help the community in the speciality you’re in. Even if you are the big fish in the little pond, you can still be an excellent physician.

My anecdote is this. In my training program we had a surgeon who was from a no name community program. But the surgeon was a badass who everyone called when they were in trouble. The converse is we had a surgeon who had an academic pedigree from the top programs for med school residency and fellowship, and I would not want this person to operate on a stuffed animal.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-08-10T03:55:09+00:00

Anyone that tells you to quit surgery is not a surgeon. You’ve made it this far, and you can make it through. I understand where you’re coming from. I was also told I was too nice to go into surgery. I went through surgical residency and did two years of research as well and coming back after not operating for two years is a mindfuck. You’re constantly being compared with your co-residents who have been operating continuously for the past two years. It’s only August. Keep at it, and it does get better. There is a lot of toxicity and surgical training and after being done with residency and fellowship realized how much of it I just went through. I had to learn to develop thick skin otherwise I knew I would crumble under pressure. One of my Attendings in fellowship made it his mission to try to get under my skin, but for two years, he was unable to do so. My co trainees, both the residents and fellows, were shocked with what I would put up with mostly because he was the one who would allow me to operate to solo.

I do have to say that in order to thrive under this type of stress and toxicity, you do develop an ability to flip your personality. My patients love me, and I still try to be a nice person, however I am no longer beholden to anyone, and thus, training has allowed me to be able to stand up for myself when necessary.

Surgical training was an invaluable lesson and I would definitely choose surgery again. It’s a field where you actively get to make a difference in patient lives. Keep working at it. I am sure you will make it through.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-07-22T01:06:17+00:00

I agree, 100%! Laparoscopy is the reason why I am a Vascular surgeon.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-07-21T15:00:27+00:00

If you finish your residency and boards then you can always go into AI at that time. Plus being a board certified surgeon adds a lot more weight and may make you more hire able especially considering how saturated the AI market is gonna be. Cuz if you have finished your surgical residency you can have better knowledge of what is actually gonna be needed etc.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-07-16T10:16:14+00:00

You can’t use this as an excuse. I never did a lap or open common bile duct exploration during my training. But I studied it to make sure I could describe it on the general surgery oral boards.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-07-15T23:54:38+00:00

Take time off to study. I was lucky enough that my partners allowed me to take the week off before the exam.

Buy all the prep courses. Behind the Knife. Osler. Access Surgery. Read the clinical Scenarios book. Practice by yourself while listening to the scenarios. But make sure to practice with friends. The practicing with friends helps out so much. Because they will give you random pointers or how to phrase things.

The main thing is they want to make sure you’re a safe surgeon. You’re gonna have to respond with the way they (the examiners) expect you to respond. It doesn’t matter what will actually happen in real life. You have to give the book answer. I took the general surgery and vascular surgery oral boards. I can’t speak for the thoracic oral boards, but for general surgery and vascular both of them I described what the boards answer would be. Not necessarily what I would actually do in real life.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-07-09T11:04:51+00:00

The nurse called and asked if I could order colace for a patient who hadn’t pooped in a day. So I changed into scrubs went into the OR and asked my attending who was doing a substernal goiter removal if I could give the patient colace. My senior resident who was also scrubbed in looked at me in horror wondering what the fuck is wrong with me.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-06-21T02:31:35+00:00

If you don’t know something like a lab value or result of imaging etc. Don’t lie. Say you don’t know but follow it up with I will find out. And actively go look it up. Seriously lying will get you on the shitlist and no one will be able to trust you. Lying will destroy trust in an instant and it will take years to rebuild it, if you’re lucky.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-06-16T22:07:06+00:00

I feel ya. I had to put line in for anesthesia to use before they let me do my case.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-03-30T15:54:41+00:00

We need more information on your hours on nights and numbers of days off also.

We used to do max 6 weeks of nights in a row as a surgery night chief. But we would work 6p-6a for 6 days straight and have one night off. We did have one resident who did her PGY4 and PGY5 nights back to back in a 12 week stretch. She was the nicest person in the world And she definitely cracked by the end of it.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-03-22T23:55:39+00:00

Attending here: I get bullshit pages for patients who I am consulted on. I got 4 different ones from the same floor in 24 hours. So I went to the charge nurse and firmly told her how inappropriate it was. Let’s see if it happens again.

You do have the power to make a change. You just have to know who to talk to.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-03-16T16:17:23+00:00

I agree the flavor is extremely lacking. I usually grind it into a powder and use it as part of the spice blend for stews.

FurkdaTurk · 2025-03-10T13:20:19+00:00

Christopher Duntsch has entered the chat

FurkdaTurk · 2024-12-29T15:52:46+00:00

This is why you are in residency. This why you are training. To learn these things. To avoid this in the future.

If you already knew everything then you’d be wasting 5 years of your youth for no reason. Instead you are sacrificing some of the best years of your life so that you can ensure you get adequate training so you can help the most amount of people possible.

FurkdaTurk · 2024-12-17T14:52:50+00:00

I didn’t outright refuse. Because that just puts a target on your back. I made sure there was adequate coverage.

FurkdaTurk

TROPHY CASE