This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Altaf Bakhtavar, specialist orthopedic You get nightmares of being stuck in a surgery with no assistants, no instruments and no anesthetist, and you wake up sweating thanking God it never happened. You tend to lose focus on the patient as a human and often reduce them to fracture femur, or mensical tear. This dehumanising mechanism often makes us sound and feel insensitive which is far from the truth. Any close person undergoing surgery scares the shit out of us as we are aware of what all can go wrong. The residency in orthopedics in government hospital (at least in India) is crazy tough. You actually feel restless when not doing anything after that. It has been 12 years now but still I feel uneasy if I am not doing anything. I walk unnecessarily fast. And believe me I was the laziest and the slowest bummer before my residency. And it's not just me , I have discussed this fact with a lot of colleagues and they concur Being a surgeon makes one intolerant to even small mistakes. We set very high standards for responsibility as any miss can harm the patient. But this behaviour often extrapolates to general life also making us less accepting of irresponsibility in daily life as well. That makes us less social. Health of surgeons is often compromised due demanding schedules, long hours of standing in ungainly postures and mental stress. There is always the unsaid threat of medicolegal issues, which always plays on our mind. We as healthcare professionals dealing with sharp surgical equipments are prone to bld borne seropositive diseases like HIV, hepatitis b and c, etc. Source
