Why do surgeons have attitude?
There’s just always more work then there is time. I think this hits a key aspect, as well: even moreso than other doctors and medical professionals (and that’s saying something), the entire system is set up to keep surgeons fully utilized because they are a limited and thus expensive resource. There are offices full of people who work to make a surgeon’s schedule runs as smoothly as possible and that all resources the surgeon needs to do his/her work are in place at exactly the right time. Being such a key employee will always feed someone’s ego, and it may lead to a complex. However, this aspect is not unique to surgeons — for example, the stereotypical IT support jerk who everyone in the office dislikes but can’t function without falls into the same category. Anecdote: my orthopedic sugeon has a reasonable bedside manner, but he is also hyperefficient. I’ve had two consults with him. Both were under five minutes; he walked in, checked a few things, looked at the file, and said “you
The way I’ve always liked to put it is: Surgeons are cowboys, and if you’re not careful they’ll ride off into the sunset on your patient. I spent enough time as a med student trying to find out if I wanted to be a surgeon that a number of surgeons let me operate on their patients. I have removed appendices and a gall bladder and once did a frontal lobectomy (traumatic clot evacuation on a homleess person who’d been hit by a bus) nearly alone, getting as far as achieving hemostasis before I needed help. I have held a person’s beating heart in my thinly gloved hand because it was too fragile to arrest it for the coronary bypass operation; and felt it contract more and more strongly with every beat, as one by one the bypass vessels were attached by the surgeon, infusing a full supply of blood to the oxygen-starved muscle. What these experiences and others with surgeons taught me is that operating on people is a venue where there is a great deal of uncertainty. To add insult to this injury
