When I look back at my medical specialty selection process, I learned two important lessons:
- Do not let others define the world for you.
- Follow your gut. It knows you better than anyone else.
I chose surgery because I enjoyed the ability to directly and immediately fix problems that cannot be healed by medicine, working with my hands, the physiology behind the surgeries, working with a team, and being able to apply my engineering skills to the human body. The story of how I decided to be a surgeon is more complex.
I am a believer in following my gut. This decision-making practice may seem rash to some, but it is based on years of experience. My gut told me where to go to school, who to marry, and it told me to choose surgery as my career.
During my clinical rotations, I thought “I could do this!” for every specialty but then there was a little thing about each one that made me not commit to it. That was, until I started my surgery rotation. On the first day of Surgery, the chief resident showed us an abdominal x-ray with free air in the abdomen. Soon, we were in the OR with the team and they were fixing a duodenal perforation with a Graham patch. That was the moment I knew I was supposed to be in Surgery.
Up until that point, my medical school career had consisted of other people defining what a surgeon was supposed to be. I was told many negative things about being a surgeon so I tried to talk myself out of doing surgery. I wrote out a ‘Pros-Cons’ ‘ list and there were significantly more Cons than Pros. Logically, the list told me I should do something else but the singular Pro of “this is what I really want to do and I will always regret not trying” trumped everything else. As I reflect on that Pros/Cons list I made when I was a medical student, I’m glad I wasn’t being logical when making my decision because the logic was wrong. My gut was right. I told my chief resident and surgery faculty and they all helped me prepare to be a surgeon. I did extra practice on my presentations, extra reading, and scrubbed extra cases. They were very supportive and made me believe that this was something I could do. My family and friends were the last to know because I didn’t want anyone to talk me out of it or tell me I couldn’t do it.
Since then, I matched at and graduated from General Surgery residency, got a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, completed a Plastic Surgery fellowship, went into academics, and now have opened up my own practice. It definitely was not the easiest path and there were times I wanted to quit, but looking back, I’m so glad I pushed through. I’ve grown into the person that I want to be because of it.
Story: Amita Shah, Photographs: John Robbins, Amita Shah
