Telltale signs of decency
June 1, 2008 at 7:00 am | Posted in professional ethics | 2 CommentsThis may strike other people as utterly irrational and stupid, but despite the fact that I got screwed over pretty badly, I would still work with these guys. Whenever I talk about what happened, the response I get is along the lines of, well we told you they were all jerks, and you didn’t believe us.
So why do I still disagree with that assessment? Because I can see it on their faces that they feel pretty crappy about it as well. I don’t know what went on behind the scenes, but I’m pretty certain that only a very small minority, if anyone at all, really intended for this to be the outcome.
And on the scale of sociopathy, remorse weighs heavily on the side of these being decent people with no choice that doesn’t harm someone, and against them being reckless, self-centered people with no moral compass. Which is an important thing to consider, because who hasn’t been in a situation where all your choices were bad ones? But I don’t want to work with people who would throw me under the bus without hesitation, the moment it becomes personally advantageous to do so.
Neurosurgery residency is a long term relationship. Longer than most marriages, as they say. And you can’t just banish everyone from your life who’s ever hurt you in any way, or spoken harshly to you. That’s not how it works. And that’s not how I work. So even though I am jobless either way in the short run, it does matter to me in the long run whether they feel bad about it or not. Because if they do, then these are people I can work with. The question I don’t have the answer to is whether they still want to work with me.
And though I don’t tell anyone so, I do give serious consideration to every specialty I rotate through. However, much as I like vascular and thoracic surgery, it’s a fellowship that requires a whole general surgery residency first. And I would never make it through that with my sanity intact. I can’t even picture myself as a PGY2 in general surgery, much less a chief. Obviously, you do what you have to. But that’s an awful lot of Have To before I’d get to the Want To. Whereas this year was really the only part of a neurosurgery residency that I dreaded.
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Hurricane Jill 
Just from reading your blog it’s easy to tell that neurosurgery is your dream. You’ve already taken a long road to get what you want. Don’t settle for anything less. I’m sure you don’t need a perfect stranger to tell you that. You already know it.
Comment by Lori— June 1, 2008 #
Well, there comes a point where you have to pack it in. I just don’t want to get there. And it really hurts that there are people who matched who were less qualified than me and who didn’t want it as badly.
I can’t help feeling like there was something not quite right about my match results. I mean, of course it feels like an injustice. But whenever someone sees my CV for the first time, there’s always that brief moment of surprise, quickly covered, at the fact that I didn’t match. And then there’s the lame attempt at explaining it in some fashion, when you can tell that what they’re really thinking is, “how in the hell did this happen?”
And then there are the people who AREN’T surprised, whose political connectedness makes this an equally telling reaction. It just seems obvious there’s something about the situation that people aren’t telling me.
Comment by Jill— June 1, 2008 #