Medicine stereotypes Good Bad or Ugly

The stereotype that every mod on TSR is a medic is the one I find most frustrating...

Doctors are much more aware of the stereotypes of other specialties than patients are. It's just harmless fun.

At first it does appear to be harmless fun but then when one is expected to fit the stereotype and doesn't and constantly comes across the stereotype, it seems more like a barrier then a bit of banter

Funnily enough it's the orthopaedic stereotype that annoys me the most and some of you have already established that
I want to become an orthopaedic surgeon, and so when I tell people this, coming from an Asian petit female, it's absolutely hilarious to them....������

Probably a bad thing - back when i was thinking of being a surgeon it was one of the main things i was worried about, and i think the surgeons my gf has met have contributed substantially to putting her off surgery.



My first experience of orthopaedic surgeons was 8 of them in a room - all male, all more than 6ft tall, all classic no-nonsense don't give a **** about students big biceps orthopods. The first case was someone who had lost consciousness at the wheel and crashed into a tree and had a c-spine fracture. They fixed the fracture. Not one of them at any point in care even questioned why the patient had lost consciousness at the wheel. It was such an incredible moment for me - until that point i had felt strongly that these stereotypes were just that - stereotypes. One of our tutors would say to 'choose a speciality that fits your personality' and i thought that was total bull. But fully 8 of them had just done that... jesus.

I did know one orthoopod who was nice, but i was taking part in his study so he had substantial motive to be nice. Obv not 100% of orthos are uncaring jocks but, you know, if even 25% of them are... it was enough to make me think anyway.

If you want to be an orthopod do your best to be so and do everything you can to not fall into the stereotype!

I understand what the career entails and true you need to be realistic. But maybe this is why surgery is so male dominated, the stereotypes, the inflexible training and working hours as a junior just being quite a few reasons.

As a wannabe orthopod i find the "all orthopods are idiots" annoying. It's also just assumed that i want to do orthopaedics purely because i am 6 ft 5 and used to play rugby as opposed to my actual enjoyment of the subject. I've seen good and bad orthopods during clinical years, some of whom had a very good knowledge of the medical aspects of a patients care (not as good as a med reg but you wouldn't expect it to be). I just hope that by the time i come to train in the specialty there are more of the good ortho surgeons around as i'd find it incredibly frustrating if all other specialties just assumed that i am an idiot

This flow chart gives me a chuckle:


Apologies to the medics who have probably seen far too much of this

All the orthopods I met when I did the firm really seemed to care about their patients and they actually bothered to teach us. Some of them did
mocks us a bit but you could tell they didn't mean it, and I'd rather be mocked than completely ignored. The stereotype is very unfair.

They were mostly male but they were very encouraging towards the female trainees so I think you should go for it if you want.

I bet they were...