Surgeon Job Description

Series Summary

One of the most invasive medical treatments is surgery, which involves cutting the body to remove diseased tissue or to repair damaged organs, bones, tendons, etc. Surgeons have a career that literally places their patients' lives in their hands. Being different kinds of doctors, like physicians, dentists or podiatrists, surgeons perform endless types of surgery depending on their area of expertise. Like many medical careers, a job as a surgeon is filled with high responsibility and stress. In this free video series on career information, an orthopedic surgeon describes his job. Get an accurate job description, and find out about salary options and qualifications. Weigh the pros and cons of being a surgeon, and find out how to become a part of the medical field. For medical career information direct from the source, learn why this doctor chose his profession. Through hard days and funny moments, surgeons hold lives in their hands on a daily basis.

Video Transcript

"My name is Dr. Richard Jackson. I'm an orthopedic surgeon. I work here in Utah County. I've been in practice since 1981. My training involved schooling, both the usual schooling of high school, college, and then medical school, and subsequent residency and specialty training. Medical school is four years. It is followed by a year or internship where we have primary responsibility for dealing with patients in the hospital. From there we have a varying degree, a number of years of residency training, where we sub-specialize or specialize in our desired areas of surgery. For me, I trained as a general surgeon for three years, had a change of heart, and then went back and did four years of orthopedic surgical training. As an orthopedic surgeon, my profession deals with caring for the muscular skeletal system of patients. I deal mainly with surgical problems that range anywhere from an injury to a knee, either traumatic or sports related, to degenerative arthritis, the knee and hip. Also dealing with shoulders that also were involved with traumatic and wear and tear degenerative changes of the shoulder. An orthopedic surgeon has really a broad range of possibilities of treatment. I have partners who do nothing but cervical or lumbar spine work in the spinal column. I have colleagues who do nothing but hand and elbow reconstruction and treatment. I have other partners who are totally isolated to simply doing trauma and problems with foot and ankle. My practice is centered around sports medicine, and treatment of degenerative arthritis."