General Surgeon Using a Scalpel Everyday

General Surgeon: has expertise in the diagnosis and care of patients with diseases affecting the:

abdomen
digestive tract
endocrine system
breast
skin
blood vessels.

General surgery is the basic discipline from which all other surgical specialties arise, medicine depends on this specialty for:

basic research in perioperative care
would healing
nutrition.

Quick Facts

Competitiveness: Moderate

Length of training: 5 years

Number of residency programs: 251

Number of residents in training: 7,403

Number in U.S. currently Board Certified in specialty: 54,802

First year median compensation: $173,000

Mean number of hours per week in patient care activities: 57.4

Residency Information

You will complete a 5 year residency in general surgery. With 1 or 2 more years of additional training you can subspecialize in one of the following areas:

Hand Surgery- expertise in the investigation, preservation, and restoration by medical, surgical, and rehabilitative means, all of the structures of the hand and wrist.
Hospice and Palliative Medicine- prevent and relieve the suffering experienced by patients facing life-limiting illnesses.
Pediatric Surgery- expertise in surgical conditions in premature and newborn infant, children, and adolescents.
Surgical Critical Care- expertise in the critically ill and postoperative patient, particularly trauma patients and those with multiple organ dysfunction.
Vascular Surgery- expertise in surgical disorders of the blood vessels, excluding the intracranial vessels or the heart.

Why Choose

If you're going to be a surgeon, most likely you will make this decision early in your medical career, sometimes before medical school. Most students find that while in medical school they had the same characteristics as surgeons and they knew from this point onward that they would be excellent in this specialty.

Since general surgery is a comprehensive specialty these physicians are well-rounded and have a broad approach to patients.

Typical Schedule

You will work 10 to 12 hour days and they will begin at 7:00 AM with hospital rounds on preoperative and postoperative patients. You will then spend about 3 to 4 hours in surgery and ten 3 hours at your office seeing patients. Lastly, there will be another hour of consultations and making hospital rounds. For your call schedule you may be on all the time or share coverage with colleagues.

As a general surgeon operations can be performed at all hours, especially for emergency situations which require immediate action. In this specialty you will do a lot of minor procedures, but statistically over 70% of your surgeries will be for breast cancer.

If You're Interested

You need to be sure of your decision to enter surgery because the lifestyle demands long hours and lots of time away from family. Your family needs to understand the demands placed on your time. Other doctors would advise finding another specialty, but if you are truly interested you won't mind the hard work that it takes to be a surgeon.