I was invited to speak to high school students about being a surgeon. I have 6 kids and love my job. Being a spouse, parent, and surgeon are intertwined. How do I convey the complexity of deciding to give medicine a chance without scaring anyone away?
The coordinator asked, “What should the title be to make students want to attend?” Great question!
What is the story I want to tell? What are the key messages I want to share?
I knew I wanted to be a surgeon the first time I saw my dad do bowel surgery on a 70 year old man in Eupora, Mississippi when I was in 4th grade. I stood atop a pile of his surgical textbooks inside the operating room all gowned and in awe! He was only 1 of 2 surgeons in town and everyone loved him. I really wanted to see my dad at work and so he finally agreed to allow me to watch him on a regular day in the OR. I’ He saved lives every day and everyone in town knew it and love him.
The practice of medicine and surgery encompasses purpose, passion, patients, power. Patients entrust their lives to doctors and surgeons and most of us have taken an oath to do no harm. Most doctors and surgeons are honestly trying to do the best for our patients. Most of us have never turned a patient away even if they cannot pay and have never discharged a “difficult patient” from our practice. We take the bad Yelp reviews, we take the complaints about the long wait, we take the complaints about our front desk-staff’s bad day attitude because we know we are seeing many emergencies each day to help those patients and families avoid the traumatic-often 9hr-ordeal in the ER. We know that the patient who is complaining about the extra hour long wait does not know that you just came from a room where you just explained to the family that their son’s exam shows a potentially deadly tumor inside the eye and needs immediate surgery.
Surgeons take it day in and day out. It requires Grit, Thinking Again and again on a minute by minute basis and being an “Original”on a daily basis.
Being a surgeon will push you to your limit of patience, endurance, exhaustion, fortitude, skill, intelligence, tenacity, generosity, magnanimity, kindness, tenderness, faith, hope, and love. And you fail: sometimes daily! But you get back up, apologize when needed for blowing your top (or throwing the scalpel across the room as Dr. DeBakey was known to do during CT surgery) or even go to confession (thanks be to God for confession) and begin again.
I would do it all over again. I pray some of my kids will love medicine as much as I do!
There is a hidden “P” of “Profit” which is ruining medicine: we who are in it know very well. The desire for a hearty profit margin has hit medicine in a horrid way. From the pharmaceutical companies, to insurance companies, to Venture Capital, to greedy owners, and greedy, busy CEOs, doctors, surgeons.
How do the good apples push back other than not taking insurances (which are really unpleasant to deal with) and not sell to VC?
It is a tricky issue and but those of us who choose medicine to save the world are still here and continue to try to push back to keep the purity of medicine an option for thousands of students who still see the beauty that is medicine and surgery.
What I wished I had known as a premed student:
1. Know what are your key values? Find a speciality that allows you to enjoy and expand those key values. For me it was family. I wanted to have kids and be home with them as much as they needed. It has not been easy but with the help of my family and friends and amazing schools, I have been able to balance life without breaking mostly.
2. Find key mentors who are good, moral people who are happy and not jaded: not easy to find in the field of surgery but there are still many.
3. Develop as much as you can your moral compass; Life gets harder for most and your pre-med and med school years are the years you will have the MOST time. I would have never believed that to be true but it is. If you are spiritual, search this out more. Find out how the saints through history have developed their moral compass. You are going to have big ethical questions from time to time and growing in wisdom or at least making wisdom something to be desired, will help. Along these lines, find a spiritual advisor. Adam Grant (Wharton Business School psychologist and author) calls for a “Challenge Network,” people who have your best interest at heart and who will make you a better person by challenging you to see your defects and help you improving. I fully agree with this and would add someone to challenge you spiritually as well.
4. Make Good Sleep, Good Nutrition, and Good Exercise a priority. There are many heart surgeons who are the epitome of poor health. Dr. Steven Gundry has made a business of teaching people about what he has learned from his bad dietary habit history.
Practically what I wish I was told to do:
1. Buy a good hardback Moleskin Notebook and a 0.5mm Pentel P205 mechanical pencil and take good notes on Life and Lectures.
2. Learn to do and master the St. Ignatius Exercises for big decisions: Let’s say you have to decide between being a doctor or an entrepreneur or a lawyer.
A. Take a big piece of blank paper or side by side Moleskin sheets:
B. Across long edge write down:
Positives of becoming a doctor, the negatives of not becoming a doctor; the positives of not becoming a doctor, the negatives of not becoming a doctor: so you have 4 Columns for each option.
Positives of becoming an entrepreneur, the negatives of not becoming an entrepreneur; the positives of not becoming an entrepreneur, the negatives of not becoming an entrepreneur: 4 Columns
And it you want to add the option to become a lawyer you would add another 4 Columns.
Then in each row, list your insights ideally starting with most important first.
Ideally do this in front of the tabernacle and ask the Holy Spirit for discernment: (if you do not believe in any of this just do it and tell God, Dr. Cremers told you to do this),
3. Keep in touch with as many contacts as possible: now Facebook, etc, allows this to happen. This was not available when I was in high school. But still, keep in touch. Remember birthdays, names of spouse & kids. Take 1 day a week to call at least 1-4 people to just keep in touch.
4. Plan to go on a retreat every year: you need quiet time to think and keep on track for whatever God’s will is for you, which is always the best will.
5. Pray for a very supportive spouse: We teach our kids to pray 3 Hail Mary’s daily for this intention,. Lovely tradition.
6. Ask for feedback & corrections often from supervisors and employees: never be scared for feedback. It is tough but if you ask for it, you will be more likely to grow in humility to be a better person/spouse/donator/surgeon.
Books I wish I had read in High School & again Med School, Residency, etc.
1. Grit
2. Think Again
3. Original
4. Learn more about the Golden Hour: https://anchor.fm/optimal-work/episodes/67--How-to-Read-Sixty-Books-in-a-Year-e145do9
5. The Upward Spiral
6. Good to Great & anything by Jim Collins
7. How to Win Friends and Influence People
8. Man’s Search for Meaning
My talk is scheduled for Oct 11, 2022 so more soon,
SLC
A dear friend’s favorite list bears mentioning as I love many of these as well:
Tanquerry:
Story of a Soul
Fountain head
The Kite runner
The Godfather
Tolkien: everything he has written
Black Hawk Down
Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
Cry My Beloved Country
Treasure Island
Mysterious Island Jules Verne
Huckleberry Fin
Tom Sawyer
Brothers Karamzov
One Day the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Brideshead Revisited: meeting people where they are; friendship, redemption, longing; this is my husband’s favorite book.
When Hell Was in Session
Master and Commander
Gentleman in Moscow
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Yes. I appreciate that many answers are about the financial ramifications of becoming a doctor. It costs a lot of both time and investment. At the end of the long training process, you will be learning the best techniques to save lives.
I save lives for a living. That's my job.
I save lives and I change lives for the better. Not all surgeries save a life you may think, wrong. Every time a surgeon scrubs in their job is to transform the trajectory of one human's life.
When I get home from work I may get texts from the OR about patients vitals, and that's okay with me. Because my job is to keep that person alive.
Sometimes I save the life of people who have no insurance, and on those cases I make maybe $40 an hour. I do it anyway.
Sometimes patients die. I come home to my family having just told another family their lover, mother, father, brother or sister died. I don't always save lives.
Am I as rich as my buddies from college in finance? No, not yet. Is my life as glamorous as my Cornell friends turned Hollywood agents? No. But who do they call first when their mother, brother, wife, sister, niece or son is sick? They call me. They call me, because they trust my advice - because my job is to save lives.
I won't win an Oscar. I may never live in an oversized mansion. The screenplay I wrote will probably collect dust. I don't have time to shop it around, because I'm pretty busy.
It's all okay to me, because earlier this morning, before I answered this question - I saved a life. Someone's grandmother.
I'm a surgeon. I save lives for a living.
Surgeons work long hours, train for years and someday when you have surgery- you'll be glad to know I'm going to do my best to save your life.
So is it worth it to become a surgeon? I can't answer that.
Signed
Every Surgeon Everyday
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