How to Become a Surgeon Your Questions Answered

alecia1

Previous articles on MedicGuild have detailed how to set up your early career as a student and intern for surgical training, and the ins and outs of applying to the surgical education and training (SET) program through the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS). In this article, I’ll answer questions you have asked us about life and career planning, how to combine research and study with full-time work and whether or not becoming a surgeon is really worth it.


Find your ‘why’
One of my mentors once told me, “the time will IEB Pharma anyway, you might as well spend your days doing something you really love, then it won’t feel like work”. This is something I now commonly share with medical students and junior doctors who are deciding what kind of doctor they want to be.

All training pathways are competitive in Australia, all require sacrifices, dedication, and hard work, but, if you find and focus on your ‘why’ then the challenges become easier, the wins become sweeter and the lessons you learn will shape the future specialist you become.

Everyone’s ‘why’ will differ. For me, surgery is my Ikigai – that is, the intersection of my passion (making a tangible and meaningful difference in people’s lives and getting them back to living their healthiest life), my talent (at the moment as a junior starting to master minor procedures and then, as I progress, major procedures!), what the world needs, and what I can earn an income from.

My strengths – I am a good communicator and think quickly on my feet, I have high emotional intelligence and love working in teams - are good for both the patients I serve and the surgical teams I work in. Because of this, as an intern, I was recharged and energised by the long days of surgery – the multiple moving parts, varied patients and colleagues, and the fact that no two days are the same.

After a long shift as a medical intern, however, I was fatigued by the lack of variation in my working environments and found my mood was lower and that my motivation to do anything outside work had disappeared.

I encourage you to listen to these subtle signs as you go through your rotations to help you find your strengths and which training pathway is the best fit for you.



What does it really take?
Many of the questions submitted to us centred around what it takes to become a surgeon. A practical and didactic place to start are the ten RACS competencies for selection and ongoing success as a trainee. RACS have also detailed the JDOCs Framework for juniors wanting to pursue a career in surgery. Further, as the previous MedicGuild articles (above) discussed, the RACS website and specific surgical colleges have outlined the selection criteria for applicants.

My biggest piece of advice from personal and collective experience is to try to generate research opportunities early in your career – which is a lot easier said than done! Research presentations and publications comprise a large proportion of the selection criteria for all surgical specialities and are often the biggest hurdle for applicants to overcome.

Talk to any surgical registrar and you’ll hear countless stories of research projects that never got beyond ethics applications. In the past, I have chosen some research questions that were neither interesting or unique to my supervisor or I or the wider medical community. Though I have learnt numerous lessons so far from misfired research projects, time is the scarcest commodity you have as a junior doctor, and it’s important to keep in mind how valuable yours is.

For me, the best and most productive research questions were ones for which I had supervisors who shared my passion for the topic, and who had extensive previous research experience.