Summary: The pros and cons of being a surgeon revolve around diverse patients and long hours. Weigh the pros and cons of being a surgeon with tips from an orthopedic surgeon in this free video on medical career information.
Richard T. Jackson has been an orthopedic surgeon for 27 years. He currently practices in Provo, Utah connected with the hospital doing sports medicine.read more
"The pros and cons of..of being an orthopedic surgeon are mainly pros. It allows me to work with both young and old. I'm able to be integrally involved in a sports medicine situation where I have association with...with many of the exciting advancements in medicine, as well as communication and...and associations with...with sports people. Here in Provo, that's Brigham Young University, we've helped in their orthopedic care for the last sixteen years. The gratifying aspects of taking care of people who otherwise would be in wheelchairs, and to restore them to full health and capacity as we replace new knees, or new hips, or new shoulders, is very satisfying. The patients are very, very grateful. It doesn't require, so much, saving a life but making life better. Some of the...some of the...what...what you would call cons, or some of the things that are a challenge to us in our profession are the hours. Certainly, because it is trauma oriented, we don't have control of when that happens, and a lot of times it happens in the middle of the night, or late at night, so there are lot of times when we're working when we'd rather be sleeping. There are a lot of times when we would have, like, a family engagement, or an important family happening where we have to say, "I'm sorry, I can't be there. I've got a patient who's in dire need and needs my help." Those are just parts of the things that you have to decide what you're going to do. There are aspects of medicine that don't...aren't involved that much with emergency-type, traumatic-type of injuries. And certainly those are available to anybody in medicine if they just want to pick the field. If you want to be a dermatologist, you don't have to worry too much about somebody getting in a car accident in the middle of the night. So there are aspects of medicine that allow you to just pretty much pick your life style."