I DID A SKIN CLOSURE ALL BY MYSELF!!!

Whoo hooo!
After 8 hours of watching surgery, I got to DO some today! Well, just a taste anyway by way of skin closure. I shadowed a urologist and got to watch a cystectomy and histerectomy/oophorectomy today (basically we took out a woman’s bladder, uterus and both ovaries because of bladder cancer).
I figure that if I want to do surgery, urology would be the one. You get to see patients in clinic 4 days out of the week and be in the OR 1-2 a week which is just fine with me. Very few emergencies, you can take home call and whats more is that urologists are in high demand these days. Sort of just like anesthesia but on the surgery side. Similar to anesthesiologists, the people are just much more laid back and happy. Dr. B who I shadowed says that he wants to keep doing it until he is 70. The surgeries are interesting and highly diverse and flexible.

The downside of course is that its a surgical specialty although with a relatively short training period (5-6 years). Also interestingly it is one of the specialties projected to have the greatest shortage in upcoming years yet urologists are very conservative about expanding slots for residencies. Talking to Dr. Birhle there are at least a couple of reasons one of which is the opening up and closing down of some bad programs (UVM, Tufts were mentioned) and hesitancy to open up any new slots unless they are “good” ones and also that there was a little fall out from the late 1990s when some docs thought they were just gonna retire and then ended up going back into practice when the bubble burst.

Anyway, what bothers me about urology is that I don’t know how motivated I would be in the long run in doing some surgical specialty since I am not really the fall in love with surgery at first sight kinda person. For example, I didn’t love anatomy all that much (and was surprised how much surgery is really just like anatomy lab, lots of dissecting, clamping, finding structures) and don’t really get that urge to do things when I am watching. On the other hand, when I finally did get to suture up a patient, I LOVED IT. So I guess I am trying to sort out how much of that excitement was just from getting to do something (which med students don’t really get to do) and how much is actually something I could see myself doing for 20-30yrs!

Its probably all a moot point anyway since I won’t get high enough board scores to qualify anyway.