With apologies to those of you who dislike sports analogies, this past week in college basketball provided an excellent parallel for what we do every day—and critical lessons to keep our emotional and mental health in a place where we can continue to try to help patients. As many know, for the first time in […]
Humility and Confidence
Although everyone may not agree, I would argue that the practice of surgery is an emotionally and mentally challenging endeavor. That we are so intimately involved in directly impacting a human being’s life—both positively and negatively— is both a privilege and a heavy weight (at times). One facet of this challenge that I find particularly […]
Saying No
One of the greatest challenges for surgeons, particularly for junior faculty, is saying no. To anything. We want to 1) serve our patients who are in need, 2) be a helpful part of the health care team without offloading work to others, 3) ensure that our operative skills are maintained, 4) pursue other non-clinical interests […]
Communicating Critical Evaluations— “Put it in Writing” or “Unwritten Code”
You are approached by a mediocre student, asking for a letter of recommendation for residency. Or an outside institution asks for your opinion—in writing—about promoting one of their quite-average faculty members. How do you proceed? Few, if any, have taken classes about this seemingly simple feat—communicating evaluations of our peers. Whether the subject in question […]
Metrics, Money and Mentoring: How Resident Education is Taking the Brunt of Increased Pressure on Academic Faculty (and Can Leaders Re-Balance the Scales?)
There are 2 truisms about residents in training, compared to their faculty: 1) they are generally slower, and 2) they generally make more mistakes. But a third fact of resident education trumps the first two—it is the responsibility of academic surgery to graduate safe, competent general surgeons who can independently take care of patients. Thirty […]