Tachy Med Student: Gems from Surgery Attendings

Want more medicine? If you're one of my medically-interested readers, or just want to read more about life in medical school, I'm pleased to share that my medical school has just started a student blog. I'm a contributor - you'll find me under Kari. Some posts I may duplicate here, but you can get some other perspectives and hear from my colleagues and classmates in other years as well. 

Check it out at: http://llusm.wordpress.com/

_________________________________

And now for some fun. Today was my final day on surgery (except tests). It snuck up on me a bit actually, but here we are.

It's hard to go through a rotation with little idea how I'm actually doing, but my evaluation was very positive, all summed up I actually had a great time, and so I leave you with a few highlights from my time on surgery:

Gems from the Surgery Attendings

From the young female surgeon working outrageous hours:
"Yes, please give me more Saturday morning clinic. Take advantage of me now while I'm husbandless and childless because pretty soon I'll be popping out kids with all kinds of abnormalities and spending all my time dropping them off at the short bus."


While I was suturing incorrectly in the operating room, in conjunction with getting smacked on the hand with the irrigator bulb:
"Stop that! When you see me, I see you. When you don't see me, I still see you. Remember that."


From the attending I spend most of my time with, after working a case with a different student:
"Oh hello. You know J? She was with me during this case. It was nice to have a student get some answers right for a change." 
*laughter*

Just the first of many questions in a very long case:
"You're in the desert, you've crashed your car, you've broken all your extremities, no one is coming to help. Would you rather have a complete or partial transection of your common femoral artery?"
I got distracted from the teaching point here, thinking, "Jiminy Christmas. Was it necessary to break all my limbs?"

From a surgeon who loves his job - at least the operating part:
"GAWD I hate clinic. God save all the internal medicine and primary care docs. I hope nothing bad ever happens to a single one of them."


From an attending after I successfully did something rather simple. Apply mild sarcasm:
"I'm so proud. Tears are welling in my eyes."


After completing my end-of-rotation evaluation:
"Be sure you stop by and leave a copy of the evaluation with the secretary. We like to be able to look back in case we see you in the news for malpractice." 
*Gulp* Does that happen often?