Why surgeons are the way they are

I’m finding out on my surgery rotation that surgeons and family medicine (FM) doctors are worlds apart (as are many different types of doctors, but let’s compare these two). Surgeons don’t really spend a lot of time talking with their patients. They don’t really connect with them as readily as FM doctors. With this in mind, here are some thoughts on surgery and surgeons.
Surgery is a very interesting process. One minute I’m introducing myself to a 30-something year old lady who is worried about her upcoming surgery, answering her questions, and reassuring her I will have absolutely no part in the actual surgery, and the next she’s under anesthesia. We take off her flimsy hospital gown, put a Foley catheter in her so she doesn’t pee on herself during the surgery, start marking on her body where we’re going to cut, cover everything that we’re not operating on and suddenly…viola…she’s just a torso of meat that we’re going to cut on.
For the next 8 hours I’m fascinated with what the surgeons are doing, identifying which parts of her insides I can from anatomy, managing the laparoscopic camera and things like that. I totally forgot who she was as a person.
In a similar story, there was a lady who needed a really big catheter inserted into her femoral vein (big vein in the thigh). She was very nervous, jumpy, and the process took over an hour for what should have taken 15 minutes because she kept yelling that it was painful and jumping making the needle come out. She quickly became an annoying leg that needed a catheter inserted.
Overall, I think it’s good that surgeons view patients as warm living pieces of meat. They are going to do very uncomfortable and frankly extremely painful things to them. They are doing this to help the patient but things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
Some surgeons are better than others at connecting with their patients, but surgeons don’t have a lot of time to talk because they are in surgery all day in addition to following up with patients after and before the surgery. If I were to break this article down, I would say that I respect surgeons for what they do and I don’t know where we would be without them, but I really like talking with people too much to be a surgeon.