Surgical Residency Vlog: Last Week, First Paycheck, and Lessons Learned

Surgery residents excitedly conclude their final week, anticipating a well-deserved break.

### Shaun Andersen's First Paycheck as a Resident Doctor
* 🗓️  Last week of surgery rotation, a celebratory birthday, and office renovations marked the beginning.
* 👨‍⚕️  A chill Monday morning with only seven patients and one hernia repair surgery.
* 😴  Early morning rounds are necessary due to surgery schedules and primary team reliance.
* 💼  A slow call day with a few consults, followed by a commitment to maintaining workout habits.
* ⏱️ Tuesday brought a long operating day with three hernia repairs and a loop ostomy takedown.
* 📝  A lesson learned about the importance of accurate and timely documentation in medical notes.
* 💰  Received the first full paycheck as a resident doctor: **$1,954.94**, with an hourly rate of approximately **$13.57**.
* 🎉  Reflecting on a successful first rotation, the excitement for future rotations, and gratitude towards viewers.

Boys are back in town, so it's our last week of surgery, sir. Dr. Wi, baby! Finally got our first paychecks in residency. We're done with cases for the morning. That pre-scrub, though. I love goldfish so much.

Good morning, vlog! It's Monday, and this is my last week of surgery. Good morning, spin! Last week in the OR scrubs. I'm kind of going to miss them.

I had a little birthday party yesterday. I had some childhood friends there. I had some friends from medical school who are at different programs here in the city, and I had some of my co-residents there as well. And I just think it's so fun to bring people together from different phases of your life.

Got to set the morning off right. Oh, and our office is gone! They are renovating the Graduate Medical Education building, and I guess they took the computers out of our office, so got to find a different place to work this morning.

Good morning! Good morning! You excited to not be on call this week, dude?

I'm excited to feel like... what... what the other side is. So I'm on ED call this week, but I think we're only covering two days, if I remember correctly. Hopefully that's the case.

Would be a shame if somebody with a perforated appendix were to walk through our door.

Why are you manifesting it, bro? I have a record good week on call, as evident from my vlog two weeks ago, so hopefully I have a little bit more excitement this week. We'll see.

I'm going to check to see if there's any surgeries first and foremost before we do anything.

Yeah, I'm kind of hoping for a chill morning of surgery.

Oh, not a bad list this morning: seven patients. Nice! Let's see if there's...

In any case, it looks like we have one surgery at 7:00 a.m.: a hernia repair, and that's it. Not bad! Beautiful, dude. Not bad, not bad for a Monday, man. The boys are back! Boys are back in one last ride on surgery. It'll be a good week. It is going

to be a good week. So, it's our last week of surgery, sir, and I think it's kind of ironic

that we're going to miss this so much because we were dreading starting. Yeah, we were so nervous

about starting surgery, and both of us wish that we started on medicine. And now we're kind of dreading going to medicine next week. It's just...just funny how you shouldn't judge

a book by its cover. You shouldn't...how the tables turn! Yeah, exactly. The tables did turn. So, we're

done rounding, and one of the comments I got in this week's vlog is, 'Why do you guys round

so early? Do you not wake up the patients?' And the answer is yes, we do. It is unfortunate. I

do think that we do round too early and we're waking up patients that we tell should get

a good rest. One of the reasons, as surgery residents, that we have to get it done early is because

a lot of these patients that are here for surgery, their primary teams are relying on us and our recommendations for their plan and their discharge planning for these patients.

So we kind of have to get our recommendations in before the primary team starts seeing them around 7 to 9:00 in the morning. And so that just results in us, you know, rounding really early. Also,

we have surgeries typically scheduled starting at 7:00 a.m. So in order to have enough time to see

our patients, do the notes, put orders in before the first case at 7:00, we kind of have to get

an early start to the day. Case is done, baby! All right, we are done with cases today. We just had

The open hernia repair which I scrubbed in for got some grub, CR usual, and now I'm on call, so I'm going to eat, hang out, and see if any consoles come in. I'm going home, you're going home.

All right, so it's about 1:30 in the afternoon. It's been a slow morning, but I finally just...

got a console. Not sure what it is yet. I need to do some chart review. I just know they're in the...

emergency room, so let's go check it out. All right, not too shabby. I saw one patient with a...

partial small bowel obstruction, another one with diverticulitis. Got the plans going, got the notes in. Exciting call day!

I told myself I wasn't going to have more caffeine, but I need a pick...

up. Okay, so I am leaving the hospital right now. It's a little after 6. I had a pretty chill day...

of call. We had just a couple consults from the emergency room, no one that had to go to...

the OR. We'll follow up with them again tomorrow. I'm really exhausted right now. I am definitely going...

to have to force myself to go to the gym because right now I kind of just want to go home and lay...

in bed, but I really want to keep up the good habits, so we're just going to push through and...

keep up the workout grind. I have no idea how Vegas hits record high heats and then it just starts...

[Music] raining. Okay, okay. [Applause] Good morning, guys! Early shift right here. Oh my gosh, I am so tired, which...

is crazy, cuz I got in bed by like 9:00. Today is going to be such a long...

Today is Tuesday, which means it's one of our long operating days. This is one of our attendings' main OR days, so let's go see how many cases we have on the board.

You guys played a lot of games last night? I woke up this morning at 4:00 a.m. thinking I only slept for

a couple of hours. I don't understand. I'm trying tonight to get a good night's sleep. I think

Yeah, yeah. All right, it's time for rounds. We're meeting our attending at 5:30, which is

early. So today we have three hernia repairs and a loop ostomy takedown. So yep, nothing crazy, but it

should be a fun day. Yep. All right, so we are done with the ostomy reversal. We also had a colonoscopy

to do, and now we have three back-to-back-to-back hernia repairs of various kinds of hernias.

I caught up on my notes finally, so I'm going to run and grab a quick snack before the next case

starts. I love goldfish so much and Oreos! Delicious. The hope is that we're done with

cases before the cafeteria closes. Sometimes that's not the case. We'll see what happens today.  Like, you guys show up every day with the intent to learn, and that's awesome. You know, do

what you want to do, dude. The chili cheese fries, they're pretty good. Oh, I saw myself on your, on

your video, so that was cool. Yeah, you were in the vlog. He's back! Freedom! Okay, so I'm leaving the

hospital right now. Today was a pretty good day. We had four surgeries and a colonoscopy. I did make

a couple of mistakes today. So after we finished rounding, I scrubbed in for our first case, and

because of that, I kind of just had enough time to put orders in for our patients that we rounded on.

This morning, but didn't have enough time to finish their notes. So, after the first case, I kind of

rushed to get the notes done between the first and the second case, and because of that, there were a

couple of mistakes I made in the assessment and plan. It wasn't a big deal, but I basically just left

some information in there that was unnecessary because it was from the previous day's plan, so it wasn't consistent with what we were actually

doing for the patient and the things that we were ordering. My attending pointed it out to me, and he was really nice about it, but it

was still a good lesson that it's better to just take my time and make sure that my documentation

is accurate because we're a consult service. You know, the primary teams are relying on our notes and our

consultations for these patients. It's also just poor form, you know what I mean, to not have the

most up-to-date, accurate information in the notes and then be signing them because, again, I'm rushing

and trying to get them done so that I can get into the next surgery. Anyway, that was my lesson of the

day. The whole point of this YouTube channel is not just to share my successes, but to also share

the lessons I learned, the mistakes I make, so hopefully you guys don't make the same mistakes

I do. Anyway, I'm really tired right now, but I'm still going to go to the gym and get a workout in.

I'm still on call, so hopefully I don't get called back in, but we'll see. Good morning! Happy Wednesday!

[Music] I can't believe this is my last week waking up at 4:00 in the morning. Next week, I start

medicine, so I have to be here by 7:00 a.m., which isn't really much better. In a way, it

is kind of nice being at the hospital before most other people get here. You get whatever parking spot you want; you can kind of play

music while you're chart reviewing because

no one's here. I don't know, I feel like I might

miss it, but then I think about yesterday and how

tired I was, and maybe I won't miss it anyway. I got to go get some new scrubs before I try

[Music] review. Fresh scrubs, baby! So we have a very short list this morning and

we have no cases, which is pretty nice. Let's go

around, baby! Let's go around. My co-standard of

what it should be. There's no context in that.

All right, we have a pretty short list this

morning. No cases! No cases for patients, my

friends! You're going to go home really early

today. Whoa! It all balances out, buddy. How do

you keep getting so lucky? Lucky! My hands look

like they did last week, so that so that they

can look like this this week. Yeah, we've had

such an interesting couple of weeks where [name] gets a really hard call, but then he gets a

really easy week afterwards, week after, and I've

just kind of consistently had a chill call week and a chill week off like call. Yeah, weird times.

All right, we're done with rounds. Yep, now we are

going to go do some notes and then get some Brey

and just that's it. Yeah, good day. No cases, really good day. I love the contrast on this rotation

where some days we're working hard and some days

we some days we're working hard, some days we're

not. Exactly. I don't want to minimize what we're

doing. I mean, we still like saw patients and you

You know, we did stuff and made sure that everything was okay. We've been at work for three hours; we've been

working. I think it's just the pace of the day can vary between days. All right, let's go do some

notes. All right, so like I said earlier, it's been a really chill day. We only have five patients on

My First PAYCHECK as a Resident Doctor!

Shaun Andersen

Celebrated birthday with friends from various life stages.

Office relocation due to building renovations.

Excited about the change to ED call (two days).

Checking surgery schedule; hoping for a calm morning.

Seven patients, one hernia repair scheduled.

Reflecting on initial anxieties about surgery vs. medicine.

Addressing viewer comments about early rounding.

Daily Surgical Procedures and Consultations

Slow morning followed by emergency room consultations.

Saw patients with bowel obstruction and diverticulitis.

Long operating day with multiple hernia repairs and an ostomy takedown.

Made documentation mistakes due to time constraints.

First Residency Paycheck and Financial Discussion

Discusses salary transparency and the importance of open financial conversations.

Shares salary details: $6,700 monthly, $1,954.94 net paycheck.

Calculates hourly rate and discusses resident pay compared to other medical professionals.

Estimates yearly income and considers additional benefits (food allowance, living at home).

Reflection on First Rotation and Future Plans

Reflects on the positive experiences of the first surgery rotation.

Expresses gratitude for working with a friend and good attendings.

Excited about future rotations and the upcoming move to San Diego.

Thanks viewers for their support and positive feedback on the residency vlogs.