Surgery News - January 2008 - (Page 9) J A N U A RY 2 0 0 8 • SURGERY NEWS OPINION GUEST EDITORIAL 9 Anticipating Retirement s unpalatable as the thought may seem to a 50-year-old surgeon working to meet the demands BY SHERWIN B. of a full schedule, NULAND, M.D., FACS serious thought should be given to the final years of a career. Like it or not, the concluding phases are already beginning to loom on the evercloser horizon. It is while the technical and brain-sharp skills are yet unvarnished that those at the beginning of the sixth decade should start planning for the next period of perhaps 20 or more years. That’s the way to ensure a future that is most likely to be valuable, rewarding, and, in fact, fun. Too many surgeons have laid down the scalpel for the last time, strode out of the operating room, and faced a void in which abilities and a body of knowledge built up over many challenging days are discarded in the name of retirement. But it has always seemed to many of us that it might be preferable to continue on a variation or perhaps a near-tangent of the arc that began in medical school, by keeping up the doctoring in a different form or using our skills in modified ways. Whether or not the younger among us choose to believe it, there is such a quality as wisdom. Restraint, long-cultivated judgment, the ability to distinguish between the enduring and the ephemeral, and acknowledgment of the incompleteness of even the greatest wisdom—these are the characteristics that gradually mature into a mind that not only is useful to others but is pleasing to itself. The surgeon who possesses such a mind may have long ended his or her tenure in the operating room, and yet retains the capacity to grow, learning from and sharing with colleagues. I would suggest a triad of factors that should be cultivated throughout the years, to enhance the later decades: a sense of mutual caring and connectedness with colleagues, friends, and, most important, family; the maintenance of the physical capability of our bodies; and creativity. It is continuing creativity that enables a surgeon to discover and express new aspects of a career: literary ability, for example, or the cool-eyed review and corre- A lation of hundreds or thousands of one’s own cases, and their recording—whether officially published or not—so that others may learn from them. A surgeon might delve into the ethical principles of the profession, obtaining a generous acquaintance with the literature and thinking of bioethicists, or finally get around to designing that innovative surgical instrument on which there was never previously time to work. A career may also include service on committees, service in hospital offices for which no opportunity was previously available, and community activities in which a doctor’s knowledge is useful. But nothing avails without health. From youth onward, attention must be paid to vigor of body and mind so that the inevitable changes that occur in one’s sixties and seventies—and later—interfere as little as possible with engagement in life. Forethought, vigilance, and application begun not later than midcareer will far more often than not ensure the rewards that perpetuate the respect accorded to a surgeon and allow a career to taper at a chosen pace rather than end with the last dressing applied to a raw wound. Just ask the surgeon who has done it. ■ DR. NULAND, is clinical professor of surgery at Yale University. CORRECTION In “Meet Darryl Stephens” (SURGERY NEWS, November 2007, p. 6), former Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan should have been listed as Dr. Sullivan. He is the founding dean and first president of Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. In “Adding Structure to Surgical Innovation” (SURGERY NEWS, December 2007, p. 4), Dr. Walter Biffl’s affiliation should have been Denver Health Medical Center, not Brown University. http://www.surgitel.com http://www.surgitel.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.