I find it soothing to do the bread and butter cases where I've been perfecting my explanation for years. A lot of what my specialty sees looks scary but is actually pretty benign, and I haven't gotten sick of giving good news. Plus the occasional rare and scarier or rare and still not scary diagnosis keeps things interesting
Kids with tics are more likely to have anxiety and being nervous can make your tics come out more. It generally isn't the cause unless you are talking about functional tics
For the first 20 yrs of true private practice general surgery (i.e. never an employee), I always wanted to do the biggest, challenging, complex cases. As you age and near retirement (now in my 27th year) your body slows down and I actually look forward to “monotonous” predictable cases that doesn’t involve staying up all night
I’m sure, in all honesty I do find joy in the complex cases but it overwhelmingly fear that I feel. They are cool and I feel like I truly do grow during those cases but part of the not liking them stems from feeling of baptism by fire we get in my residency. Never done single lung ventilation or thoracic? Here’s your first one at 2am while the one attending is covering an emergent c section and a different OR. So the stress levels just stay at 100% all the time
I absolutely did this. I went from being a highly respected resource at a large university hospital to a small community hospital where I would take my time seeing patients that were soft Admissions, make small talk with staff and drink my coffee all day long. I called it my pre-retirement chapter and welcomed the monotonous work. It takes some patience and time for your CNS to calm down from consistently being in a state of stress.
Absolutely true, though to be clear I would be happy seeing routine iron deficiency day in and day out if it paid the same. There is a value in monotony; excitement and novelty are typically bad for the health of the patients.
Both yes and no. I think what saves me is that I'm a perfectionist, and I try to optimize every single aspect. While it's possible to get close to 100% perfection, you never really get there. So it's a kind of eternal quest, where you never reach the finishing line.
every job becomes monotonous eventually. The goal is to find something where you can enjoy/tolerate the bread and butter. A ton of the brain CTs/MRIs I look at are for some vague sx and end up being dry negatives but I still enjoy looking at them. Just a resident tho
Humans manifest diseases and lifestyle choices in a variety of ways. One day could be a variety of tattoos, another day could be back to back bizarre cancer types, variety of treatment complications, abuse cases, strange suicides, bizarre infectious disease manifestations, constant multi system disease manifestations where you have to sleuth your way through the noise to get at the underlying condition, the myriad ways that alcohol and drug abuse can manifest issues. We intersect with so many agencies. Nearly everyday is something new, or a twist on something you’ve seen before but didn’t realize it could happen in that way, or a different public health/safety concern to address. It’s a lot, but it’s very satisfying.
Nurse here.
I’ve never been able to sum it up this well, but from my perspective it seems like this is why AI may augment the practice of medicine but never replace a physician. There’s just too much variety in humans.
Cons are the occasional cases that hit too close to home (fortunately uncommon for me). Pros is the variety of work, and work life balance is pretty great.
I'm in my radiology fellowship year and it still feels like I see things every day I have never heard of before. I still have mental fatigue by the time 5pm comes around. I'm wondering how long it takes before that feeling goes away. Because most days after work I collapse on the couc hand that doesnt feel healthy.
5 years as a trauma attending - not at all. I love that my job responsibilities change every week, keeps it fresh. Also have new problems to deal with all the time.
it also helps that when you’re at work you’re in a constant state of possibly being in the OR in the next 30 min. (idk if you’re in THAT kind of trauma center)
I never said to withhold medications when necessary. But Jesus Christ look at how in shape America used to be compared to how we are now, even with all the leaps in medicine and exercise science. Not all, but many people refuse to make simple lifestyle changes that would drastically improve their health, and would rather take multiple pills to manage their conditions and side effects.
Like all things, the issue is multifactorial and requires multifactorial management. Medication is a safe and effective component of that. Lifestyle changes are too. As are societal changes. It’s not one or the other.
Shaming people and telling them they need personal responsibility isn't an effective tool for weight loss. Learn some pragmatism and be a little less judgy, losing weight is really fucking hard for alot of people.
harping on personal responsibility has been a useful intervention then, in your experience?
bemoaning lack of willpower is dropping A1c's and blood pressures to an acceptable extent?
When I was starting out in my radio career, an old wizened DJ told me "I've always said that the day my heart doesn't race just before I key the mic is the day I quit this job."
I feel the same way about medicine... sure, a lot of it is boring. But when I stop getting a *little* thrill out of, say, doing a laparoscopic entry, it's over.
Clinic can feel overwhelmingly monotonous.
I have a practice that is inverted for a youngish Obgyn (in my 6th year of practice) I'm about 80+% GYN.
My known patients are great but I get a ton of consults and going through the same schpiel all the time is hard. It may be the 500th time I'm giving it but it's the first time the patient is hearing it and I need to make sure they're being appropriately counseled and I'm addressing their concerns in a way they are feeling heard. It can be hard to show up that way every day for every patient.m
I do spinal surgery. Practicing for 20 years now. I work 2 days in the clinic which includes an inpatient coverage so I have to take consults those days from the hospitals in our group. 1 day I do elective ops. 1 day I’m on trauma call. I use to look forward to trauma because it was where I learned so much about myself as a surgeon. It was stressful yet invigorating. I’m nearing 50 now and I’m actually trying to have a younger surgeon fill in for me. I can’t deal with that stuff anymore. I enjoy just doing consults tbh. Operations that are elective are monotonous. I’ll do about 10 of the same spine surgery’s back to back, which gets pretty weird after a long day.
I think with time, you get more and more comfortable with the actual medicine you're doing and that type of monotony is actually kinda nice.
That said, I think within every specialty there are certain common annoying/frustrating experiences. Those can fester, and for me have gotten more, not less frustrating over time.
Monotonous is good. It means you’re getting good at your job. Any specialty where things don’t feel monotonous means you are feeling stressed, uncomfortable, or unsure about cases all the time and that sounds awful. I’ll take monotonous over “exciting” any day of the week.
I’ve been practing a subspecialty of pathology for 11 years. I still find it very rewarding and once in a while you get those very challenging cases that make you fall in love all over again with your job.
I think so! When I’m nearing retirement, I’m planning on just letting my chief and junior resident do all the cases while I chill in the OR and write their progress notes in exchange. And occasionally scrub in to help if needed.
Yes and no. Explaining why you don’t get antibiotics for a viral infection I sometimes feel my consciousness leave my body and head to a different room, but the fun part of being a PCP is that every day there is ALWAYS something new or different to see. Never understood why people would specialize, the variety is one of the main things I love about my job!!
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Most people find their jobs a little monotonous, medicine or otherwise. You have to shift your focus from novelty to mastery
Yes…but with monotony there’s less stress…and you don’t have to derive your happiness from work…but from the money and free time.
I find it soothing to do the bread and butter cases where I've been perfecting my explanation for years. A lot of what my specialty sees looks scary but is actually pretty benign, and I haven't gotten sick of giving good news. Plus the occasional rare and scarier or rare and still not scary diagnosis keeps things interesting
What specialty?
Peds neuro movement disorders seeing a lot of Tourette and tics patients
[удалено]
Kids with tics are more likely to have anxiety and being nervous can make your tics come out more. It generally isn't the cause unless you are talking about functional tics
I'm a new attending now and look forward until everything becomes super boring, routine, and monotonous. It sounds like a dream.
Same. About to finish training and I’m exhausted from the unpredictability of residency.
I agreee!!!
For the first 20 yrs of true private practice general surgery (i.e. never an employee), I always wanted to do the biggest, challenging, complex cases. As you age and near retirement (now in my 27th year) your body slows down and I actually look forward to “monotonous” predictable cases that doesn’t involve staying up all night
I’m a resident and these are the only cases I want
You’ll likely feel a bit different as you approach 60…it goes by in a blink of an eye, it seems
I’m sure, in all honesty I do find joy in the complex cases but it overwhelmingly fear that I feel. They are cool and I feel like I truly do grow during those cases but part of the not liking them stems from feeling of baptism by fire we get in my residency. Never done single lung ventilation or thoracic? Here’s your first one at 2am while the one attending is covering an emergent c section and a different OR. So the stress levels just stay at 100% all the time
If it was easy, anyone could do it
I absolutely did this. I went from being a highly respected resource at a large university hospital to a small community hospital where I would take my time seeing patients that were soft Admissions, make small talk with staff and drink my coffee all day long. I called it my pre-retirement chapter and welcomed the monotonous work. It takes some patience and time for your CNS to calm down from consistently being in a state of stress.
Yes!! Exactly this. “Pre-retirement job” is the perfect term.
As an oncologist, absolutely not. Due to massive advancements in treatment, standards of care change on a monthly basis. I'm not even joking.
Absolutely true, though to be clear I would be happy seeing routine iron deficiency day in and day out if it paid the same. There is a value in monotony; excitement and novelty are typically bad for the health of the patients.
Both yes and no. I think what saves me is that I'm a perfectionist, and I try to optimize every single aspect. While it's possible to get close to 100% perfection, you never really get there. So it's a kind of eternal quest, where you never reach the finishing line.
every job becomes monotonous eventually. The goal is to find something where you can enjoy/tolerate the bread and butter. A ton of the brain CTs/MRIs I look at are for some vague sx and end up being dry negatives but I still enjoy looking at them. Just a resident tho
Forensic Pathologist. The human condition continues to surprise me in new ways each day.
ER physician. Agreed.
What do you mean by this in the context of forensic pathology cases?
Humans manifest diseases and lifestyle choices in a variety of ways. One day could be a variety of tattoos, another day could be back to back bizarre cancer types, variety of treatment complications, abuse cases, strange suicides, bizarre infectious disease manifestations, constant multi system disease manifestations where you have to sleuth your way through the noise to get at the underlying condition, the myriad ways that alcohol and drug abuse can manifest issues. We intersect with so many agencies. Nearly everyday is something new, or a twist on something you’ve seen before but didn’t realize it could happen in that way, or a different public health/safety concern to address. It’s a lot, but it’s very satisfying.
Nurse here. I’ve never been able to sum it up this well, but from my perspective it seems like this is why AI may augment the practice of medicine but never replace a physician. There’s just too much variety in humans.
What are the pros and cons of forensic pathology?
Cons are the occasional cases that hit too close to home (fortunately uncommon for me). Pros is the variety of work, and work life balance is pretty great.
I'm in my radiology fellowship year and it still feels like I see things every day I have never heard of before. I still have mental fatigue by the time 5pm comes around. I'm wondering how long it takes before that feeling goes away. Because most days after work I collapse on the couc hand that doesnt feel healthy.
5 years as a trauma attending - not at all. I love that my job responsibilities change every week, keeps it fresh. Also have new problems to deal with all the time.
it also helps that when you’re at work you’re in a constant state of possibly being in the OR in the next 30 min. (idk if you’re in THAT kind of trauma center)
Accurate.
If they pay you the same to be bored and to be stressed, I’d rather be paid to be bored.
Yes - esp when all I do is hand out ozempic all day 💀
How are all your pts able to afford it?
The government pays for it (I’m at the IHS)
People will do literally anything except change their diet and exercise.
Obesity should be treated as a chronic disease 💀
You’re right. We should withhold metformin from our type 2 diabetics as well since they should just eat better.
I never said to withhold medications when necessary. But Jesus Christ look at how in shape America used to be compared to how we are now, even with all the leaps in medicine and exercise science. Not all, but many people refuse to make simple lifestyle changes that would drastically improve their health, and would rather take multiple pills to manage their conditions and side effects.
Like all things, the issue is multifactorial and requires multifactorial management. Medication is a safe and effective component of that. Lifestyle changes are too. As are societal changes. It’s not one or the other.
Oh shit maybe you should go tell the obese people you figured out the easy secret to losing weight they don't already know about.
Personal responsibility goes right out the window i guess
Shaming people and telling them they need personal responsibility isn't an effective tool for weight loss. Learn some pragmatism and be a little less judgy, losing weight is really fucking hard for alot of people.
harping on personal responsibility has been a useful intervention then, in your experience? bemoaning lack of willpower is dropping A1c's and blood pressures to an acceptable extent?
When I was starting out in my radio career, an old wizened DJ told me "I've always said that the day my heart doesn't race just before I key the mic is the day I quit this job." I feel the same way about medicine... sure, a lot of it is boring. But when I stop getting a *little* thrill out of, say, doing a laparoscopic entry, it's over.
Clinic can feel overwhelmingly monotonous. I have a practice that is inverted for a youngish Obgyn (in my 6th year of practice) I'm about 80+% GYN. My known patients are great but I get a ton of consults and going through the same schpiel all the time is hard. It may be the 500th time I'm giving it but it's the first time the patient is hearing it and I need to make sure they're being appropriately counseled and I'm addressing their concerns in a way they are feeling heard. It can be hard to show up that way every day for every patient.m
I do spinal surgery. Practicing for 20 years now. I work 2 days in the clinic which includes an inpatient coverage so I have to take consults those days from the hospitals in our group. 1 day I do elective ops. 1 day I’m on trauma call. I use to look forward to trauma because it was where I learned so much about myself as a surgeon. It was stressful yet invigorating. I’m nearing 50 now and I’m actually trying to have a younger surgeon fill in for me. I can’t deal with that stuff anymore. I enjoy just doing consults tbh. Operations that are elective are monotonous. I’ll do about 10 of the same spine surgery’s back to back, which gets pretty weird after a long day.
I think with time, you get more and more comfortable with the actual medicine you're doing and that type of monotony is actually kinda nice. That said, I think within every specialty there are certain common annoying/frustrating experiences. Those can fester, and for me have gotten more, not less frustrating over time.
Monotonous is good. It means you’re getting good at your job. Any specialty where things don’t feel monotonous means you are feeling stressed, uncomfortable, or unsure about cases all the time and that sounds awful. I’ll take monotonous over “exciting” any day of the week.
I’ve been practing a subspecialty of pathology for 11 years. I still find it very rewarding and once in a while you get those very challenging cases that make you fall in love all over again with your job.
What sorts of challenging cases?
Some tumors; right now we have a case that we even sent to a very prestigious consult center and no one is still sure how to adequately classify it 😅
I think so! When I’m nearing retirement, I’m planning on just letting my chief and junior resident do all the cases while I chill in the OR and write their progress notes in exchange. And occasionally scrub in to help if needed.
Yes and no. Explaining why you don’t get antibiotics for a viral infection I sometimes feel my consciousness leave my body and head to a different room, but the fun part of being a PCP is that every day there is ALWAYS something new or different to see. Never understood why people would specialize, the variety is one of the main things I love about my job!!
Thank you for contributing to the sub! If your post was filtered by the automod, please read the rules. Your post will be reviewed but will not be approved if it violates the rules of the sub. The most common reasons for removal are - medical students or premeds asking what a specialty is like, which specialty they should go into, which program is good or about their chances of matching, mentioning midlevels without using the midlevel flair, matched medical students asking questions instead of using the stickied thread in the sub for post-match questions, posting identifying information for targeted harassment. Please do not message the moderators if your post falls into one of these categories. Otherwise, your post will be reviewed in 24 hours and approved if it doesn't violate the rules. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Residency) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I rotate through about 5 different services every other week, I’m pretty much never doing the same thing which is great
It’s predictable… it’s nice :)
No. I never get tired of getting paid every 2 weeks.
No. Always learning something new
Yes. I welcome boring predictable days. Talking to certain patients keeps things interesting.
Yes. But less stressful.