Surgery was by far my hardest rotation. The hours were long, the operating room (OR) was often tense, and the learning curve was extremely steep. However, it was also by far, the most worthwhile rotation. Having a clearly defined role as part of the surgical team with opportunities and expectations to really participate was what I imagined clinical year to be about, and this rotation delivered that from day one. 

As PA students, we attended rounds, attended clinic, and scrubbed into (or observed) surgeries; I found the OR and the actual surgery component of this rotation to be the most difficult part. Even though the actual procedures felt formulaic and easy to understand once I saw a few, it was my first time in the OR and it was a steep learning curve to get used to the prep and different surgeons’ styles of teaching or instructing OR staff. I wished that I had more time to read about and understand the surgeries I scrubbed into. But between the long hours, class assignments, and studying for the EOR exam, I didn’t feel there was adequate time to prepare as much as I wanted to. By the end of the rotation, surgery didn’t feel as foreign to me as it did in the beginning, but I did leave it feeling like there were still years worth of things I didn’t know. 

Clinic was my favorite part of the rotation, and it confirmed for me that I really enjoy speaking with patients and hearing their concerns and answering their questions. I also realized that Surgery was the perfect middle ground between the volume of new and returning patients. I much prefer this mix of “short-term follow-up of a known problem” and “new patient with a mystery problem” in comparison to Family Medicine where even I – over the course of just 5 weeks – was seeing the same patients over and over with the same cluster of chronic conditions. 

If I could redo this rotation the way I wanted, I would choose to do Surgery as an elective without the added burden of classroom assignments and a national exam. Without those, I would feel much more prepared and confident walking into the OR. And even more importantly to me than that, I would have much more time to go through patients’ charts from admission to discharge and really understand their hospital course and clinician notes. Overall, this rotation taught me a lot and I’m curious to see how being on the receiving end of an admission from the emergency department will help me on that rotation when I start it in August.