Association for Academic Surgery (AAS)
Inspiring and Developing Young Academic Surgeons
The Academic Surgeon is the official blog of the AAS. We post anywhere from one to three times a week and our contributors will focus on issues relevant to young academic surgeons, residents, fellows, and even medical students.
If you would like to contribute, please submit your post here: https://www.aasurg.org/the-academic-surgeon-blog-submission/
It has been a challenging few weeks. Thank you to all of you surgeons and your families who have accepted personal risk to uphold your commitment to your patients, hospitals, and communities. Our individual roles and burdens have varied, but we have all been called upon to adjust to ever-changing realities and have been thrust …
The sequel to House of God entitled “Man’s 4th Best Hospital” hit the shelves in November 2019. The author Samuel Shem brings all of his original characters back into the modern-day reality of all-for-profit healthcare. They reunite to form a small, comprehensive care clinic adjacent to one of the large, university hospitals. Their goal: to …
The novel, zoonotic coronavirus, SARS-CoV2/Covid-19, is thought to have started in humans as early as November 2019 in Wuhan, China. At the time of this discovery in mid-March 2020, the infection was no longer regional. There were over 137,000 individuals infected in more than 70 countries in every corner of the world and over 5,000 …
To say that the current COVID-19 pandemic is stressful is an understatement. We have all felt the worry of exposure and the impact such an exposure might have on our family and friends. We have worried about aged parents and grandparents. Many of us have lived the stress of having to help children adjust to …
This year students are being told that they are active witnesses to a major historical event – the COVID-19 pandemic. This has left many third-year medical students with an overwhelming sense of frustration and despair as away rotations are cancelled and research opportunities dwindle. The most important lesson that I’ve come to appreciate from my …
Dr. Funk – Four years ago, I wrote a blog for the Academic Surgeon titled, “Finding Your Primary Mentor” – https://www.aasurg.org/blog/finding-your-primary-mentor/. I was two years into my first faculty position, and I wanted to share some thoughts with trainees and junior faculty members who were starting research programs. Since then, I have mentored 10 undergraduate, …
Surgeons fix things. That’s what we do. We take patients broken from trauma, cancer, end stage organ disease or a myriad of other problems, we cut, and most of the time we cure. We are in a profession of action. So, what happens when we are called to the opposite; when we are asked to …
We’re “re-blogging” the article below to prepare for our next AASChat taking place on Tuesday, March 31st at 8:00pm Eastern – please join your colleagues on Twitter for an important discussion on Discrimination, Harassment & Burnout in Surgical Residency Training. Our moderator for the Chat will be Dr. Yue-Yung Hu, MD MPH. Dr. Hu is …
The AAS Membership Committee’s “Membership Spotlight” series – each month in The Academic Surgeon and on the AAS homepage we will introduce you to a member of your association. Eittel E. Oppenheimer is a staff surgeon at the University of Florida affiliated North Florida/South Georgia VA Medical Center. He completed his general surgery residency at …
A few months ago, I came across some disturbing news from my hometown in Karachi, Pakistan. The pictures you see below show medical waste, including contaminated sharps, washed up across a stretch of the popular Clifton Beach. The outrage that ensued on Twitter and other social media platforms led authorities to close down the beach, …
