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Why are SubIs the way they are??
#11
Junior attending here,
They are ignoring you because they are burnt out.  As a neurosurgery attending, every one in the whole hospital knows who are and wants you to say hi and engage in meaning conservation.  You will not have time to do that, with the demands of the neurosurgery.  You have to place your patients and their families first.  Next your staff.  There's only so much interaction you can do per day and it takes a toll on you. You will be  up all night and working the next day and have many things on your mind.  The last thing you want to do is create small talk with the medical student who will be gone in two weeks.  Please don't take offense.  But make sure neurosurgery is what you really want to do.
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#12
The problem with subi’s that are pure shadowing is you can’t show a work ethic bc you aren’t allowed to do any work. I guess you can show your ability to stand still and be silent for hours and take a good mood about it. That’s probably considered valuable in some way, but seems like a huge waste of everyone’s time.
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#13
(08-15-2021, 08:43 PM)Guest Wrote: The problem with subi’s that are pure shadowing is you can’t show a work ethic bc you aren’t allowed to do any work. I guess you can show your ability to stand still and be silent for hours and take a good mood about it. That’s probably considered valuable in some way, but seems like a huge waste of everyone’s time.

You can show that even when things are shitty, you’re standing around doing nothing for hours, running patients to scans, and working 100+ hours/week that you’re still friendly and enthusiastic about the work and every opportunity to help the team.

The whole point is to see what you’re like when things are tough, not to enthrall you with the field or stroke your ego. If you want to be taught, ask intelligent questions. If you want to participate, constantly ask to help. You cannot fathom how busy and stressed the residents and faculty are. Just try and make their days better when your days suck. That’s the real test
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#14
Junior attending here.

Despite what the others on here say, your concerns are valid. You are allowed to love neurosurgery and be bored doing the "work" of a SubI. You shouldn't be offended; you have next to no neurosurgical knowledge and don't even have the MD to be able to do busy work. It sucks that SubIs have to be both learning opportunities and show-off sessions, but that's the system we're stuck with. That said I will say:

- This is your chance to figure out if NSGY is really for you. If you find yourself unable to sustain interest for large parts of the day, maybe it isn't your bag. No big deal. Find something that is.
- There are natural educators everywhere in our field, and they are going to be the ones that support you and teach you the most. Seek them out. On the flip side, there are great surgeons who have neither the talent nor the inclination to take care of med students. Take what you can from them and move on. If you're at a program that's full of the latter kind, maybe you've figured out that program is not for you.
- Despite all SubIs theoretically having the same "duties" and same lack of knowledge, any resident or faculty will tell you there are great ones and terrible ones. There is a certain quality that the best SubIs have that is a "know it when you see it" kind of thing: they fit in well with the team, find natural ways to be helpful, are not annoying, know appropriate-level information when it IS asked of them, and above all maintain a level of enthusiasm that is infectious. There is usually not much disagreement among us when it comes to whom we like the best. You want to be one of those people.
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#15
Being a sub-i was boring. The fatigue of being a sub-i was far greater than almost all parts of my residency.
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#16
(08-16-2021, 12:43 AM)Guest Wrote: Junior attending here.

Despite what the others on here say, your concerns are valid. You are allowed to love neurosurgery and be bored doing the "work" of a SubI. You shouldn't be offended; you have next to no neurosurgical knowledge and don't even have the MD to be able to do busy work. It sucks that SubIs have to be both learning opportunities and show-off sessions, but that's the system we're stuck with. That said I will say:

- This is your chance to figure out if NSGY is really for you. If you find yourself unable to sustain interest for large parts of the day, maybe it isn't your bag. No big deal. Find something that is.
- There are natural educators everywhere in our field, and they are going to be the ones that support you and teach you the most. Seek them out. On the flip side, there are great surgeons who have neither the talent nor the inclination to take care of med students. Take what you can from them and move on. If you're at a program that's full of the latter kind, maybe you've figured out that program is not for you.
- Despite all SubIs theoretically having the same "duties" and same lack of knowledge, any resident or faculty will tell you there are great ones and terrible ones. There is a certain quality that the best SubIs have that is a "know it when you see it" kind of thing: they fit in well with the team, find natural ways to be helpful, are not annoying, know appropriate-level information when it IS asked of them, and above all maintain a level of enthusiasm that is infectious. There is usually not much disagreement among us when it comes to whom we like the best. You want to be one of those people.

Never forget, neurosurgeons perform very difficult procedures AND deal with their patients dying, not improving, or requiring enormous amounts of care, AND with the affected families. The drain on emotional bandwidth is profound and for many the best strategy is to throttle their emotional reactions. That doesn't leave much general "warmth" to spread around.
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#17
The solution is to stop operating on patients you can not help for the money, stop prolonging the deaths of dying patients that can not be surgically helped, and stop talking to families because you suck at it. You never had the emotional bandwidth or “warmth” to begin with because of their neurodevelopmental autism . Much of the work a neurosurgeon does should not be done, the work that should be done is done better by Rad Onc, Orthopedics, Radiology, and Neurointerventional radiology. Not all neurosurgeons are bad, just most of them.
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#18
(08-17-2021, 01:04 PM)Guest Wrote: The solution is to stop operating on patients you can not help for the money, stop prolonging the deaths of dying patients that can not be surgically helped, and stop talking to families because you suck at it. You never had the emotional bandwidth or “warmth” to begin with because of their neurodevelopmental autism . Much of the work a neurosurgeon does should not be done, the work that should be done is done better by Rad Onc, Orthopedics, Radiology, and Neurointerventional radiology. Not all neurosurgeons are bad, just most of them.

Didn’t match bruh?
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