The Journey : 4. What trauma surgery would teach me

The Talks

I've always been one to want constant challenge and progression. There's a quote from the movie "Kill your darlings" that I adore and feel represent my point of view really well: "I love first times. I want my whole life to be composed of them. Life is only interesting if life is wide." The great thing with trauma surgery, is that most days, you'll experience new things. Sometimes, it gets a bit crazy. And an ER is always busy. You could say, the trauma and emergency care gets crazy busy and I would be one to say that, but Dr. Darria Long has an interesting take on the matter. Her TED Talk An ER Doctor on Triaging your "Crazy Busy" Life has made me hopeful that trauma surgery would teach me how to deal with complex schedules and intense days. In a way, after listening to her talk, I believe trauma surgery would be beneficial for me in general. 

Dr. Daria Long's TEDxTalk

She explains how switching your mindset from "crazy busy" to "ready mode" can help you triage priorities. I absolutely LOVE her triage analogy to everyday challenges. One thing we use in triage is a colour code. Dr Long teaches that we have to ignore what's noisiest and find our reds. A red tag in triaging is an immediate emergency, but only those you can act on and have a chance of being successful. Emergencies that are lost causes, as heartbreaking as that may be, are black tags. You do not prioritize those. Once all of the reds have been treated, you move on to yellows. Those are important, but can be delayed. Finally, you can take care of your greens. Often, greens are pretty nosy and distracting, but aren't urgent. I had never really thought of applying the same logic to my daily life. Somehow, even if people told me "prioritize", it never made as much sense ad how Dr Long said it. A second tip that she mentions is to expect and plan for crazy. In the ER and the OR, you know things can get out of hand and that unexpected twists are bound to happen; you prepare for it. Why not do the same in with life? Set your environnement in a way that even in the craziest times, it'll be easy for your brains to take the right decision. That's something very useful that trauma medicine could teach me, because when I get anxious I tend to fall back on the easiest path, the one that feels safer. Finally, her third advice on how to triage your life is to get out of your head. That's something that isn't easy for me as I tend to be really close to my emotions and overthink everything. As much as that can be useful in trauma, as you often work at a quick pace and in emotion packed situations, there are times when you have to be more objective and focused. Daria Long offers a tip that uses the only loophole in my anxiety: focus on someone else. Focus on caring for your patient or whatever is in front of you. Widen your perspective and take in more information. That's how you go from "crazy busy" to "ready mode". 

Next up, a talk from Dr. Najma Ahmed, literally titled What I've Learned As a Trauma Surgeon. This inspiring woman exposes what it's like being a woman trauma surgeon. Not only does she mentions the highlights of being a surgeon, but she also shows the worst of it, all with humanity and truth. 

Dr. Najma Ahmed's TEDxTalk

The beginning of her talk focuses on something I know would be hard to accept for me: there is so much trauma worldwide that is preventable ! Part of being a trauma surgeon, therefore, is accepting that the patient you are treating could have been very well off it it hadn't been for societal issues, behaviours and structures. Most days as a surgeon, you'll be confronted to people that, up to a few hours earlier, had hopes and dreams and all had that shattered away in a question of instant. "Being a surgeon is being a grace in face of adversity." Isn't this beautiful. Waking up every morning, knowing that your day will be challenging and busy and possibly heartbreaking from your blacks and lost reds, but, every morning going to work with the intention of saving as many people as you can. Surgeons get to experience the beginning of life and the end of it. Trauma surgeon, get to see the impact of the worst human behaviours, like shooting someone else, and the impact of the best of human behaviour, like a team of medical professionals from diverse backgrounds coming together to save a patient. Therefore turning the worst day of their life into something a little bit less horrible. 

Dr. Najma Ahmed pushes even further the reflexion regarding the highs and lows of humankind and the impact medicine can have on trending issues like discrimination, but also the impact that issues as gender equality can have on medicine. There's one thought she mentions in her talk that really said with me. Differences are way greater on the outside, under the surgical drapes everyone is the same colour. Meaning that, maybe one patient is black and the other is white; maybe one is a homeless person and the other one is studying law, once they get in the operation room, those differences do not stand anymore. Once the surgeon cuts open their body, the bones will look the same, the muscles, the organs... I find that quite beautiful: the very science that studies the human body and that tries to help everyone, actually doesn't care, in a way, of the differences. Sadly, what's truth inside the body and inside the OR, isn't necessarily true whilst surgeon train. Even though, women now have the choice to be what we want to be, the very system is against us. It is dominated by male, who can travel more easily for conferences and presentations, who can more easily spend time away from home, who aren't shamed for doing so. Not only that, but women, in medicine, must keep being excellent no matter what, while men can be mediocre once they achieve a certain standing. That is not fair and is something I will have to fight during my journey. In brief, Dr Ahmed's talk reminds us that, in medicine even more so, we are all interconnected and should act accordingly. We never know the impact our words and actions may have on someone else. 

The Speakers

Dr. Darria Long is a graduate from University of Rochester's School of Medicine. She then completed her emergency medicine residency at Yale. Her experience as a a clinician is extensive, but what makes her truly worth of listening is her unique perspective, because of her health troubles that allowed her to see a patient's point of view. In addition to that, she was an instructor of medicine for Harvard. This makes her a great popularizer of her knowledge. Dr. Najma Ahmed has started nearby us. She completed her MD and general surgery residency at McGill university. Moving on to Toronto, she developed her skills with a trauma surgery fellowship. What's impressive is that she didn't stop there and graduated from a second fellowship, this time in critical care from the University of Michigan. In her current professional life, she is not only still a physician, but she openly advocates from stricter gun control regulations in order to reduce the number of preventable traumas in Canada.