doc w/ Pen

Beneath my white coat, you can see the maroon OR scrubs that I wore every day while on my trauma surgery rotation. Wearing these scrubs every day provided an unforeseen benefit: less laundry to do.

My enjoyment of this surgery rotation thus far has been a pleasant surprise. Besides learning about, well, surgery, I have encountered important life lessons. But I have also accrued some unforeseen benefits. I think that understanding these perks will provide additional insight into what life is like on the surgery rotation.

Chore relief. On trauma surgery, you wear scrubs all day every day, with the exception of Monday morning’s Morbidity & Mortality conference. That meant I had less laundry to do. Given that I have to lug my dirty clothes up and down several flights of stairs and down the block (I’m in a walk-up apartment, and the laundry room is in the basement of a different building), that’s no small thing.

Budget boost. When I was working with the trauma surgery team, I would leave my apartment at 5 a.m. and get home somewhere between 6 and 8 p.m. That’s a long day, by any standards. I noticed that over four weeks of that schedule, I bought significantly less toilet paper. Actually, my grocery bill was lower overall. I was so busy that I simply ate less. In part because the workday on surgery was so hectic, and in part because when I got home at night I was too exhausted to do more than shove some food in my mouth and collapse into bed.

Free medical supplies. Yesterday, while I was cooking a batch of chili, I managed to slice open my thumb on a can of diced tomatoes. I ran to the bathroom, thrust my thumb under a stream of running water, and scrubbed the cut with soap. Before reaching for the box of Band-Aids in my medicine cabinet, I turned to grab a Kleenex to dry my finger. Then I remembered that I had something much better — sterile gauze! A packet from the hospital had made its way home in my white coat pocket. Hm. Maybe I should grab some more?

I wouldn’t consider these reasons to do a surgery rotation, exactly. But since surgery is a medical school requirement, I certainly won’t turn down the random fringe benefits.