It's Always Sunny in Surgery

We're back! Finally, after a 9 month self-imposed exile during the trifecta of the arrival of additional children 👨‍🍼, MD thesis submission 🎓, and the behemoth that is the FRCS 🥊, we're still standing, we've got the bruises to show for it, and its also right into the middle of our 3rd birthday. So happy birthday to us! 🥳🎉

It's been an eventful time! We talk about the joys of:

• Country life 🧑‍🌾🐄
• Stacking up training / academic / life events to breaking point 😅
• Ballpit academia and the virtues of AI 🤖
• Which is easier? Being on-call or being a parent? 🔪🧑‍🧒‍🧒
• Hollywood scriptwriting X FRCS..... the crossover you definitely don't want AND never asked for 📺😒
• Pimping yourself out to corporate overlords 🤑

We are lining things up again, but Assad also has to wrestle with the final part of the FRCS in the next few months, so episodes may be sporadic... Please be patient with us.

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Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical)

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Brought to you in the middle of ARCP season and family holidays, we get introspective and put ourselves under the microscope, to explore why we ended up down the the route we did 🔬

• Why do so many brown people end up in medicine?👳🏾‍♂️ 🩺
• Is it hardwired into ethnic DNA?🧬
• Cultural and racial differences we can only discuss as friends…😬
• Private vs. state education and the relative merits of each 🎩 🍾
• How is the transition into the surgical persona beneficial for life? 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒

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John Cusack in ‘Say Anything’: https://youtu.be/VEgu7jdc_fs

Email us: [email protected]

Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical)

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Don't worry don't worry! Thank you for your concerns for welfare, we've not had a bust-up or lost interest; it's just that life/work/training/families get in our way and are making it increasingly difficult to find time to record. And with it having been ARCP season recently, we set our portfolios to overdrive at the expense of everything else.

What starts out as a catch-up devolves into a lengthy chat/rant about:

• Prophylactic tie-wearing to assert dominance
• Training and the conflicting directives therein
• Selling out to corporate sponsorship
• Peppa Pig
• Medical superstition

And more... Anyways aside from chronicling our trials and tribulations, we strategise on ways we plan to deliver what we set out to deliver in this season. More episodes to follow!

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The clip from Wayne's World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgLYGBbDNs

Orthopaedics vs. anaesthetics BMJ Xmas study https://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7506

Just like Stevie Wonder says, superstition ain't the way: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0883944118303770#

The Peppa Pig effect https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jul/19/peppa-pig-american-kids-british-accents

This episode was actually recored on the day the man, the legend Brian Wilson died, inspiring the title of this episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lP8BZcyoEQ

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Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical)

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This week has us scoping out surgeons in the media and our favourite examples. Are these portrayals accurate? Where exactly do they come from? Which ones are based on just pure stereotypes and which ones must be getting that insider information?

We discuss:

• The historical hassle of having to arrange out of hours imaging 🩻
• Every surgeon’s dream ward round 🏃🏽‍♂️💨
• Art imitating life 🎨
• The little details that make these programmes particularly poignant 🚰
• The worst examples never show the admin we do! 📑
• No matter how over the top, there’s no smoke without fire 🔥
• And, as a little extra (keep tuned to the end!) some people getting it all mixed up 🙃
• Also, some of the joys of a decent hairdresser 💇‍♂️, a proper brew ☕️, and a chance to offload 🗣️

There are SO many examples that we didn’t get to cover, so we will probably come back to this topic again.

Here’s some of the source material we discussed in the episode:

• Simon Bramhall liver guy with the initials in the liver https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-59954321
• Psycho plastics guy Nottingham stabbing his colleague https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3d8nymg12zo
• Scrubs - Turk doing rounds https://youtu.be/JOZK1qD9usU?si=vrn-6SZXCPs1lRVs

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Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical)

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It has oft been said that “The heart of a lion, the eyes of an eagle, and the hands of a lady maketh the surgeon.” Well then, time to get into it! Who or what are surgeons? What makes us tick? Do we really need the ❤️ of a 🦁, the 👀 of an 🦅 or the 💅of a👩‍💼 to do the job well?

• Are the characteristics needed to be a surgeon hardwired into us? 🧬
• If surgeons were made to wear the Harry Potter sorting hat, what house would we be, and what does that say about us…?🐍
• We get introspective about our own personalities and how we fit into this work persona 🔬 🤓
• How much crossover is there between us and psychopaths? 🫣
• Are we really more attractive than other types of doctors? 💁‍♀️
• What does it all really boil down to…? 🔪🙏

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Additional sources discussed in this episode:

Well, we're not gonna argue! 😏 https://newsfeed.time.com/2013/08/30/survey-surgeons-are-the-most-attractive-doctors/

Yikes 😬 https://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1308/rcsbull.2015.331

If you say so...https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/44562/some-surgeons-may-be-psychopathsbut-thats-no-bad-thing

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Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical)

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We're back after a very lengthy break! In that time we talk about:

• Snow days and the joys therein ☃️
• Moonlighting when you're off the clock / back-street quackery 🦆
• Pumping those logbook numbers up! ⬆️
• Flirting with disaster...😅

But essentially, we're using this episode to mark our transition into what we have planned for this season, and that is to get all existential and explore who or what are surgeons? What makes us tick? What makes us cut? Is there an archetypal surgeon? How relevant is that in today's workplace? 🤔

All / probably some of these things will be explored in the forthcoming season.....ARCP pending. Ha.

(As mentioned previously, we have to reduce the frequency of episodes to monthly for our own sanity, well-being and to ensure we still have our training numbers 🤞)

Email us: [email protected]

Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical)

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And so, we are closing up again. We discuss some of the other finer points of this specialty series:

• The ability to amuse oneself is one of the purest joys
• Audiences in new places
• Nearly a full house of specialties...
• ....However, it's harder to remain anonymous in smaller circles
• We re-affirm our commitment to bringing you solid content...
• ...But our lives and our jobs are getting more serious now..
• Our plans for next season

Email us: [email protected]

Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical)

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This is it folks! This is what we have been building to for the last 6 months! All the uppercuts, all the low blows, all of the urine extracted from orthopaedics 🦴 and all the shade thrown at neurosurgery 🧠 all culminate in this…

We are rejoined by listeners 🎧 , contributors 🗣️ and now pundits 🎙️ Michael Ahn (Health Education West Midlands) and Dan Lazenby (Health Education North West) as we comment on the whole of last season, and what a season it’s been!

We discuss:

• Capitalism at its worst 💸
• We won’t get cancelled will we?! 🚫
• Low key fans in high places 🧐 (proof down below)
• Acolytes of the knife joining in🤰👁️
• The best, best thing about surgery 🔪
• Core memories 💩
• Pinky / ye olde index haemostasis 🤙
• The best, worst thing about surgery 🥂
• Disappointing Asian parents 🫠
• Everyone gets a bit of love…except orthopaedics…because we don’t wanna admit that we need them… 😅
• The phantoms and apparitions that are cardiothoracics and neurosurgery🫀
• The winner 🏅 and loser of this season (with a little help from ChatGPT) 🤖

But remember folks…the real winners are the friends we made along the way! 🤝

-Go forth my son and cast thy pod! (the deanery’s unofficial endorsement of our activities).

https://imgur.com/a/5yWG5FD

-You just can't compete with him.... so don't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonny_Kim

-We're family here https://www.ted.com/talks/gloria_chan_packer_work_is_not_your_family_jan_2022?subtitle=en

Email us: [email protected]

Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical)

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This season, we’ve been sat on the sidelines, taking in the action and providing commentary on the action like a Jim Ross, Jerry ‘the King’ Lawler duo (and thus the origin of the title of this episode)…

Anyways, later than advertised (as we grapple with Black Wednesday, new hospitals, new firms, kids, m0ar inductions and the joys of mandatory training), we are rolling up our sleeves and getting stuck into the questions we set for the others and we talk about: the best and worst things about training, what we wish we knew before starting, who we admire, who we’d cheat with and who we could lay the smack down on…

Email us: [email protected]

Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical)

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Just like any major cable television event, here comes another break in the action…

This season has been pretty challenging to get trainees from every specialty together. We received some messages from concerned listeners doing a welfare check when the last episode should have been released.

Fear not! We’ve not gone anywhere. We just didn’t want to release additional filler episodes whilst we are scheduling and recording the last couple. These neurosurgeons and cardiac surgeons are an elusive bunch… 👀.

Anyways, because we have no other way to communicate with everyone, here we are, another filler episode just to let you know we’re alive and well, and working on original content.

Email us: [email protected]

Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical)

Reddit: u/surgicalcareersNW (www.reddit.com/u/surgicalcareersNW

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