Pull Up a Chair, Sit Down, and Listen

Abstract

When I was a medical student rotating on the various clinical services and thinking about career decisions, a common refrain from those offering advice on these decisions was that an early ‘branch in the career decision tree’ was deciding whether you liked caring for patients or liked doing procedures. I sensed that this advice was creating, or at least suggesting, a false or inaccurate choice. In fact, I even remember hearing that surgeons should not get too close to their patients in order to retain a sense of detachment. Somehow I just didn’t see it that way.