Surgical Stereotypes

In hospitals across America, surgical stereotypes are alive and well. When I started in the OR, I was determined to give everyone a fair chance. I thought, “There’s no way people’s personalities can be subjugated into such narrow categories that easily,” but as time went on, I discovered that each specialty does seem to have it’s own personality. Within each personality there are still a vast assortment of individual quirks and dispositions including: crab-asses, jokesters, nitpickers, huggers, talkers, whiners, silent-types, etc.

Online, people who recognize stereotypes within surgical specialties are often chastised for propagating them. In my opinion, they are just something that exists. They don’t necessarily apply to everyone, but there is a large enough cross-section of the surgical population acting in a way, which supports their existence. As a new tech, the blatant differences in surgical personalities were actually kind of helpful in establishes which specialty I wished to work in long-term.

Personally, I am an Ortho Chick. I found that Ortho, overall has a very masculine vibe to it. We tell dirty jokes and listen to rock music. We talk about sports…a lot. Our total joint room sounds more like a machine shop than an OR. While I personally don’t care for hoods, I like that my docs wear them and I can see their smiling faces as they work. I like that my mayo stand is organized, but there could be blood on everything and that’s okay. These things make me happy, like giddy-schoolgirl-with-unicorns-and-glitter-and-ice-cream happy. And yet, these same things make other techs cringe. I worked with a tech that did a lot of cardiac and she hated (we’re talking hated with the passion of a thousand burning suns) giving me breaks. In cardiac (at least in her cases), cleanliness was next to godliness and the idea of a bloody instrument on your stand was enough to cause heart palpitations, which coincidentally your cardiac surgeon could easily deal with if the need arose.

Everyone has his or her favorite specialty and that what makes surgery great! If everyone wanted to do ortho, it would suck because then I’d have to start bumping people off to keep my job and I’d probably get arrested and go to prison where the only surgery I’d get to do would be when one of my gang got shanked with a sharpened toothbrush or something (which definitely isn’t within my current scope of practice, but whatever).

So I was going somewhere with this post originally…. OH YEAH! Stereotypes! (Back on track. Woohoo!) Anyways, I was thinking the other day about surgical stereotypes and thought, surgical techs have a motto, “Aeger Primo” (“Patient first” for those of you that chose a non-extinct language to study in high school). What if surgical specialties had mottos too? Below are some ideas I had for a few of surgeon groups out there.

Ortho: We’re gonna need a bigger mallet.

Urology: Grab it like you mean it.

Vascular: All bleeding stops eventually.

OB/GYN: Delivering babies 24/7 because sleep is for the weak.

Colorectal: Shit could be worse.

Plastics: Beaten with the ugly stick? We can help!

Neuro: No brain, no gain.

Podiatry: Ignoring gnarly Frito-looking toenails since 1813

Of course, these are all in good fun. (You know I love all my surgeons.) I’d love to hear what mottos you, my fabulous readers, would give to surgical specialties.

Till next week, friends…stay sunny and stay sterile.