Surgical Perspective

This guy gets it.

He is the Peter Egan (Road and Track) of the surgical world. He understands where surgeons are coming from, and hopefully can communicate that to life to others.

A great read, and right on in many respects.

Excerpts:

"Surgeons, for better or for worse, by virtue of what we do, are mired in reality. Although our detractors say we are short on creativity and imagination, or lack expansive intellects, we understand that what we think and what we do on the job are fenced in on all four sides by flesh and blood. Artifice, speculation and the free associations that create monstrously long histories and physicals and endless differential diagnoses entertain and delight—but we have no time for embellishment. We are always looking for the best way, the only way, to get from A to B. An operation is a discreet event with hundreds of interconnected decision points with only a “yes” or “no” box attached to each bifurcation. This black-and-white world is no leisurely place for those in love with “nuanced thought.” In the yes-or-no world the clock is always ticking and the stern judgments of consequence and accountability require satisfaction with every move. It can be a harsh place in which to work."

"I thought of my philosophy professor from college, who wrote the definitive treatise on love. Everyone knew he had never had a relationship with a living thing, so I finally got up the nerve to ask him what qualified him to write the book if he had never been in love. He told me “experience distorts perception,” and made me promise never to become a philosopher. To punish me, he made me read “The Philosophy of Sport” by Paul Weiss, another philosopher who, at 5 feet 2 inches and 112 pounds soaking wet, had, by his own admission, never broken a sweat."

Enjoy.