Whats its like in medical School and being an Orthopedic Surgeon?

Question

Whats its like in medical School and being an Orthopedic Surgeon?

Answer 1

I'm a medical professional myself, although not an MD.  But if you want to be an orthopedic surgeon?  Then for the good of US society, DON'T get brain-stuck.  Orthopedic surgeons are ever-ready to chop.

It happened to me--a well-reputed Ortho. surgeon, too, in our area.  If you email me your personal email address through Yahoo, I'll send you a photo of the outcome--a horrible leg deformity which left one leg 2" shorter than the other, and forced me to walking on the ankle bone of my right ankle because the leg had become so bowed. It was years before I could get it 'corrected' because 6 doctors in a row wanted to give me a total knee replacement--but I'm too young for that, and I didn't want to give up skiing or jogging.  Years later I had a hemicallotasis procedure (knee cage) performed at Stanford University Hospital in CA.

The outcome of the Stanford surgery?  Send me your personal email, and I'll show you the outcome of that, too.

My experience with ortho. surgeons is that they only look at bones on Xrays and never consider the muscular component of the disorder--and more often than not, except for car accidents and other such trauma? For chronic pain, it's the muscles that cause the pain, not the bones. Xrays are misleading..

So send me your personal email, and I'll show you the photos of my results of surgery, performed by surgeons deemed "excellent, highly recommended" in the communities in which I lived.

Answer 2

The above comment is very appropriate. Try always to remember this is a human you are working on, not a chunk of lumber.

The best surgeons consider non-surgical treatments, too.

"Primum non nocere"

As for what it is like in Medical School and Residency training, basically you give up any life except Medicine, 24/7. It is hard, stressful work, and lots of very smart folks can't take the heat. Medicine is sorta like the Marine Corps- they make a man out of you or you're gone. The reason? You have to be tough to be a physician. You have to be able to think clearly when exhausted, handle 36 hour days, deal with life and death situations without losing it. Med School is part of the process. You work HARD. 500 page reading assignments/night, 8 hours of lecture and lab. 4 hour written exams in every course, plus oral exams in some. (e.g. my final in Bacteriology - they gave us 10 bluebooks each and one question: "Discuss Malaria". Most of us were begging for more time at the end of 4 hours.

Residency is also stressful- you have a LOT to learn, and only a few years to do it. Maybe there is an Orthopedist on YA that can tell you about the Residency.