The toxic culture of surgery...

The story of two attendings. One we’ll call Toxic and the other Nice.

Toxic is your typical surgery bro with a god complex.

Nice is a good surgeon and a patient teacher.

I was on call with Nice when Toxic came to sign out to us on the patient he just operated on. He shared his plans and some labs to follow up on.

I asked if the labs had already been ordered or if I needed to order them.

Things went off the rails quickly. This was routine for him to go off for random reasons. And it didn’t help that he and I never got along for some reason.

He started berating me and called me all kinds of names. I looked over at Nice. Nothing. Just looking at his shoes.

As a chief resident who ran out of Fs to give, I turned around and walked away. He kept yelling as I walked away.

Later on in the evening, I was in the operating room with Nice. We didn’t talk about what happened earlier with Toxic.

“I like how you handled that situation with Toxic,” he said.

I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to say to him.

This was a common and widely known behavior which many had witnessed themselves. Yet, nothing ever got said and nothing ever got done.

Not even by the nice surgeons.

So when we see charts like this one showing Black and Latinx trainees being driven out of surgery and surgical sub specialties, it’s not only because of those who contribute to the toxic culture of surgery. It’s also because of the nice bystanders who say and do nothing.

As a surgeon, how are you standing up to toxic surgeons? How are you supporting trainees who are vulnerable?

#BlackMedTwitter #MedTwitter #MedStudentTwitter #surgery #SoMe4Surgery

Or are you Toxic ?