My job

Unfortunately, since I don't yet have any children or have the time or money to travel a lot, my blogs are all pretty boring. Why is that you ask? Well, that is because I am a resident. Specifically, I am an orthopaedic surgeon in training. I finished med school in 2004, wasn't able to find a job in ortho my first year out, and took a position as a general surgery resident in Chicago. It sucked. I worked a ton and was barely able to enjoy the year in a great city (as an example, I had exactly 4 2-day weekends off in 1 year, ugh). After that, I moved to Philadelphia to begin work in my true love, orthopaedic surgery.

So what is it that I do all day? Well here's a quick rundown of a typical day:
5:45 - 6:30 (or so): meet with the resident on call from the night before and go over x-rays, then round (check on) all of our patients in the hospital
6:30-7:30 : conference in which we go over a topic assigned for the day (this requires reading about 40-50 pages of text book the night before)
7:30 - ? : Operate. This may be several short cases or just one really long and complicated one (for example, we fixed the right humerus and three fingers on a 350lb patient. That took 10 hours.) Once or twice a week, I may be in clinic seeing patients who we operated on previously (taking out stitches, checking follow-up x rays, etc)
Whenever the OR is complete for the day, the team meets again and goes over the things that have happened during the day: new consults, problems with patients, and who went home. This may happen at 5 pm or 9 pm. After that, the person on call takes over care of all the orthopaedic patients. Basically, he or she is in charge of the patients on the floor, the OR, and the ER. Sometimes all three blow up at once, and that sucks. The person on call then usually gets to leave the next morning after conference, meaning a 26 or so hour shift with possibly no sleep (yuck).

It's actually a great job, though. I went into ortho because I love surgery ( and power tools), love helping people get their mobility back, and I am not so good at treating seriously ill people. I just can't work at a job where most of my patients won't get better.

Here is some of my handiwork! On the left is a lady who fell off her bike and broke her elbow. On the right is a dude that got shot in the leg during a robbery (please note all identifying factors have been removed for patient privacy).

Here are some of the dumber things I've heard as a resident (or student) the past 9 years:

"Yeah, she had SIDS twice as a baby"- A patient's mother, trying to explain to us why her daughter had a slight speech impediment. Apparently, our patient was a zombie.

"well, I couldn't afford my blood pressure meds anymore" - A kindly grandma explaining to us why her blood pressure was in the critical range. Became a little awkward when her lab tests came back positive for cocaine. Guess we know where all of her money went.

Various stupid ways of breaking things:
The patient who jumped off the Ben Franklin Bridge and straddled a guardrail on I-95 in the fall. He broke a lot of things, especially his manly parts.

A patient who was "Stoofing" his neighbor's wife. Broke both ankles jumping out the window when the husband came home.

The lady who broke her fibula while trying to jump on a chair to avoid a cockroach.

Anyone riding a motorcycle.


A med student asked me how you can tell different residents apart. My reply: medicine residents put their stethoscopes around their necks (aka "flea collars"), surgical residents put them in their pockets, and ortho residents put them on ebay.

That's me on the left!