It is so interesting to get different people’s opinions of me. I was evaluated today by the surgeons I’ve been working with. They labeled me as quiet, reserved, passive, even mousy. They were concerned I would not make an impression on people where I rotate or do my residency. This is interesting for 2 reasons: first, they are surgeons and by definition they have to fairly out-going and aggressive. For goodness sake, they are cutting people up!! Therefore, they don’t understand introverts. I am an excellent listener, thoughtful and compassionate. I wasn’t able to show them these qualities in the OR other than listening to people yak, in which case they don’t notice anyone is listening as long as no one else is talking!! Plus, they didn’t see me in lectures where I regularly answer questions or ask questions of the instructor while most other students sit passively through the lectures.
Secondly, the OR was an extremely intimidating place for me, so I naturally shut down until I became comfortable and understood my position. Once I became comfortable, I didn’t have many questions because surgery became rather boring to me. Once patients are scheduled for surgery, or yet, as soon as they are referred to a surgeon, the course of action is fairly straight forward. I asked a few questions that I thought were intelligent, but I didn’t ask the questions like, “Do you think OMT instead of surgery could help facilitate the healing of this [fill in the blank]?” “Should we do soft issue OMT to the thoracic and lumbar paraspinal muscles to help this patient regain bowel function?” “How about suboccipital release for all the patients who are intubated?” What’s really ironic is that Inland Hospital is the only Osteopathic hospital left in Maine, but you’d never know this by the way it is run…
