Surgical or Physician Training???
been meaning to blog about this for a long time, but never had the time or the best state of mind to (if you know what i mean). don't think i am in the best state of mind to blog about it at the moment, but who cares...so the question is Should I do surgical training or physician training? Basically in medicine, most (approx 95%) people specialise in something after med school. The options are:
- GP
- surgery
- physician/medicine, or
- subspecialties (like dermatology, opthalmology, psychiatry, etc)
now, GP is out of the question for me. GP work does not suit me at all. I am not a good all-rounder at all. Knowing everything, but only the first 10% of them will just drive me out of my mind. I will not be able to function. But the advantages are: it's relatively easier to get into the training scheme, shorter training period, easiest to find a job and good working hours.
Haven't yet found a subspecialty that i'd consider doing. Derm and Opthal are just too completitive, just to get onto the training scheme. And competition, no doubt, involves a bit of sucking up to people (and i don't know how and don't want to be involved in that). Psychiatry, although is interesting and currently in need of people, isn't for me either, cos the thought that some of my patients will have homocidal thoughts about their treating doctor makes me uneasy.
So this leaves surgical training or physician training.
I like the idea of surgery. If something's broken, you fix it. it may involve making a hole, cutting out something, reshaping, or joining something up. the patient gets on the table sick and comes off it all fixed. Whereas with physician/medicine, you are playing with physiology (something that man has not completely understood and i understand even less). you depend on medications to work, but they work differently in different people quite unpredictably. you wait ages for one to work, and if it doesn't, you try another one. it's just not straight forward enough for me. But to be fair, surgery is not that straight forward either. The cutting or the filling is not the difficult part, it's the decision whether to operate that's the challenging part. That plus choosing the best approach to a surgical problem is what distinguishes a good surgeon from an ordinary one.
The problem is surgical training is more demanding and the life of a surgeon is much tougher. (Working 7am - 6pm +/- overnight shifts a couple of days a week PLUS studying for exams that if you don't pass has post-failure counselling available, is just too crazy.) If I was not a Christian, i would go into surgery with no hesitancy. I know that i am not smart, and i'll have to work very hard to be a surgeon, but that would not stop me. I would be willing to give my life and soul to surgery. I would be happy to live the life of a surgeon since i'm passionate about it and i'm willing to give it all i've got and more. But i am a Christian, and I know what i've been called by God to do, and that is to give my life to God and do everything, not for myself, but for Him; to strive to deepen my relationship with Him and build His kingdom with other Christians. So, at this stage, i simply can not see how a life as a surgeon would be compatiable with life as a Christian. I am not saying that there can not be Christians in surgery. As i'd said earlier, I am not one of the brighest people in this profession. To do ok in my job, i'll have to work very hard, harder than other people. Christians gifted with a surgical mind or surgical hands can become good surgeons, but i don't know/think that i'm gifted in this way.
So this leaves physician training, and this is perhaps what i should do. Is this what God wants me to do???
This matter had been on my mind quite a bit in the last couple of weeks-months. struggling between what I want to do and what I think God wants me to do. But i've decided to let it go for a couple of months. Various opportunities are coming up, eg talking to the right people / making contacts, but for now, i'll borrow Scarlette O'Hara's line, "I'll think about it tomorrow" and pray more about it.
posted by zhinger @ 9:42 pm
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