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I finally worked Monday after a 4 day hiatus. I was going insane, not working. It wasn't about the money I wouldn't be making 6-12 weeks from now, but rather about not being in surgery. I scrubbed in with an Orthopod for my second case of the day, and eased the MS IV out of my territory. He wants to go into Emergency Med anyway. The Orthopod informed him that I was a surgery junkie. I wasn't sure any one had noticed.
A Trauma surgeon, I'll call him My Trauma Surgeon, called me on my cell phone Sunday to see if I was available on Monday to assist him. I was hoping when I heard his voice that he was calling me in for a trauma, but I'll take a scheduled case with him any day. He always keeps me in mind when he is on E.R. (do you mind if I NEVER call it E.D.?) or trauma call. Unless the complexities of the injuries require another surgeon, I am often his first choice, not because I'm that good necessarily, (sometimes just providing exposure is all it takes) but because he knows I love it (at least when we win), I'm a perfectionist, and I'm available approximately 7 days/nights a week.
Yes, I have no life. Or actually....that is my life. It's just unlike the average person's life I suppose. I think it is a very good life now. When I was still doing both jobs, assisting on my own time, especially when I was gathering my clinical cases and the fifty I needed to be released from provisional status, and scrubbing for the hospital, my personal best record was 22 hours. It helped me to think of it as my own little residency. I know, a paltry shift compared to surgical residency, no comparison. Still, it helped and I never complained.
I gathered an extreme amount of respect for surgeons during that year. Elective cases running beyond 2100 in an overbooked, understaffed O.R., orders to write, rounds to make at multiple hospitals, charts to finish-don't want to be on the suspended list, clinic the next day, ER call that night, sometimes in two hospitals, 0730 start the next day.......repeat. What? Me complain. No way.
As far as I'm concerned, you deserve all the money you make. The education, (and debt!), the hours, the skill, the knowledge, the responsibility, the political BS, the ignorant administrations, Medicare regulations, legal scrutiny, bloodless surgery, doling out horrible news to family......you deserve every penny. And unless I have given up all that you have, until I can match the sacrifice you made to reach your acheivement, I have no right to judge you or be jealous of your financial status.
2 comments:
i understand your obsession with surgery. i share it.
one question. what is a first assistant? i mean other than the obvious. what i mean is are you a doctor? (in my country you'd have to be a doctor, but once sid spoke about nurses that are trained as assistants. hence the question.)
Thank you for the question.
There are several forms of FA's here. A lot of PA's assist in surgery as well as help with clinic etc. APN's are also widely used. Both of the former are "elegible" for Medicare reimbursement. RN FA's used to be very widespread, not sure what percentage are still assisting. I am lower on the food chain. I am a certified surgical technologist who has taken a course in first assisting from an accredited college program.
If I remain disiplined and they don't change the rules, I figure it is going to take me about 6 more years of working my way through school to make it to PA.
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