Common Personality Traits of Surgeons

There is an obvious difference between doctors who recommend drug treatments and surgeons who approach invasive treatments through surgery.

What makes a doctor a good surgeon is a mix between qualities (professional, well organized, practical, good communicator etc.) and what can be considered defects in many other contexts (dominant, authoritarian, egocentric, impersonal etc.). The term "defect" is used improperly here, because these characteristics are negative, as previously said, in the case of other categories of people; but in the case of surgeons these make them masters of what they do, helping them to be confident that they can accomplish an intervention and ultimately save the patient on the operating table. It is easy to understand why a certain person must have enormous confidence in himself/herself in order to believe that they can save a person's life within a few seconds that make the difference between life and death, in the case of a possible intraoperative complication.

An interesting reading in this regard is the work “The surgical personality: fact or fiction” by James H. Thomas.

Beyond the qualities and defects, however, the first quality of a surgeon must be intelligence. The application of a procedure, performing the operation step by step using sterile surgical tools, as described in the treaties, can be done by any surgeon. The trouble comes from the fact that the patient is not always as written in the surgical treaties, so the best way is discovered by the surgeon, during the operation.

 

 

Originally Posted here: Common Personality Traits of Surgeons

source https://blog.apiarymedical.com/common-personality-traits-of-surgeons/