I have known for a long time and discussed with others the fact that medical students choose their practice specialties based solely on their personality. It would only be anecdotal that one was so impressed by an individual that he or she chose to follow in that person’s footsteps. Just as you said, you can’t explain why you chose surgery. It comes from within, from your traits, interests, and desires for challenges from physics, chemistry, and the laws of nature; not the smell of the rose or the prose of the bard.
Someday DNA analysis at birth will map out not only the diseases that will fall upon us but also a psychological profile of how we will react and behave.
Harold Haston, MD Via e-mail
My father was a general practitioner and my godfather, a prominent pulmonologist. They assumed I would be an internist and felt that I had gone to the dark side by choosing surgery. But I knew I liked the “fix-it-now” immediate gratification afforded by surgery.
Most distinctly, I remember my chief resident (when I was a medical student, no less) looking at a carotid angiogram for a trauma patient and asking me “What do you think?” The acknowledgement of me as an important member of the team, whose decision mattered, has stayed with me for 25 years. A few students have similarly informed me that they have chosen a surgical career in part because of my interactions with them, which is perhaps the highest honor to which a surgeon can aspire. Surgery is a guild, a brotherhood, and a holy calling. One must have the desire, but one must also be inspired to accept the challenge. We, the surgeons of today, must not forget that we are the inspiration for the surgeons of tomorrow.
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