School Student
What's surgery like?
Karen-Harrison-Phipps
Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon
Guy’s & St Thomas Hospitals, London
I feel lucky to really enjoy my job and always feel enthusiastic about getting up for work each day.
Although interested in surgery from a very early age I initially thought to do Paediatrics while at medical school. Surgery was well taught but it would be fair to say that there was no encouragement and I do remember an SHO saying to me “its probably not worth it as a lady if you want to have a family”. This was in complete contrast to the great support received throughout my surgical training with encouragement from all Consultants even while pregnant and breast feeding. At no time was there any prejudice against my being a lady surgeon.
I did my surgical house job in Maidstone with Mrs Marie South and this really was the catalyst as she acted as a mentor and role model and after a few appendicectomies and vascular anastomoses I was hooked. I wonder what would have happened had I not gone there, and suspect that I may have regretted not doing surgery. I would say that it really helps to have a role model and that if someone is thinking about a surgical career they should spend extra time with different groups of surgeons. Clearly the largest exposure is to General Surgery which may not be quite what you were looking for.
I would advise anyone thinking about surgery to come down to theatres even outside your timetable, have a look and get involved. We are all busy but friendly and always willing to show or teach a technique. The more surgeons see your interest the more they will be inclined to take you under their wing and guide you. Regarding work life balance, I would say surgeons have a huge commitment to their patients and as a Consultant surgeon I personally keep my mobile phone around at all times. That said, it is manageable and I do have a very active out of hospital life with a husband and 2 small boys aged 2 and 9. I keep very fit although sometimes that involves running to and from work to fit it in but I do also play in a ladies rugby team!
I do enjoy the variety of skill mix required together with the variety of operations that I am required to perform. 40% of our patients have benign conditions such as pneumothorax , empyema or hyperhydrosis, but most are very grateful for their treatment which is almost completely done by a keyhole technique.
60% of the patients I see have cancer. These operations are challenging as they involve disconnecting the lung from the vital attaching connections to the heart and trachea. Often additional resection of diaphragm, chest wall, spine, pleura etc is necessary to get the tumour out completely. For smaller tumours however we are building up our experience with minimally invasive lung resection (VATS lobectomy). Other important groups of patients are those with metastatic disease to the lung, which can sometimes be resected with curative intent, and patients who need surgery to stage or diagnose their conditions such as pleural effusion or mediastinal lymphadenopathy. Although these operations are not major surgeries, being mainly keyhole, the group of patients is still very interesting as we surgeons have to think like physicians to consider all the diagnostic possibilities.
Even though the majority of the elective workload is challenging one of the More exciting parts of the job is getting involved with other surgical teams in the treatment of unusual conditions. This includes helping the plastic surgeons reconstruct the chest wall and breast in a young girl born with complete lack of chest and abdominal wall development, helping the head and neck surgeons remove neck tumours that have spread down into the chest, taking mammary arteries for flaps to reconstruct after extensive head and neck surgery etc.
