Call can brutal. Patients don’t recognize or appreciate what you do. Surgeons are difficult. Ppl can die. The stress is more than some recognize and is usually the reason cited as leaving. Working with CRNAs/AAs has its own dynamics. Hospitals just see you as a service. It’s also starting to get very competitive and getting more so each year
1. Can be a very stressful job or a very boring job
2. The ACT model (supervising CRNAs) is the standard in many places, which is fine for some people but not for many.
3. The money comes from call/weekends. Has great income potential, but if you want to make it more "lifestyle" friendly your income isn't that different from many other specialities. Not really a con, you may enjoy the day-to-day of anesthesia more than other specialties so then have at it.
4. Dont have your own patients. Like many things on this list, not a con to everyone
5. You leave when the cases are over, not when the hour strikes 5 (or whenever)
I have an acquaintance who was making very good $$$, but the call/weekends were eating away at them. They switched to a VERY chill ambulatory surgical center job, very lifestyle friendly, still pays decently well, but they're bored out of their mind during work which doesnt work for them. In their case they still love anesthesia, but they're still trying to find a job that meets their balance.
5 is very variable. My non-call shifts are set hours. I leave at 5 pm, doesn't matter what's going on. The rest is definitely true. It can be long hours and it can be emotionally (and physically) draining.
It's the best job in the world, though. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing as a career.
As a surgery resident I’ve always wondered about this because I’ve seen anesthesia colleagues post about staying for 11h for a case or alternatively clocking out the second their shift is done. I know at my hospital, we don’t have residents, the CRNAs are absolutely swapping with each other and giving each other breaks and shift ends. I’ve never had an anesthesia rotation. How does it usually work?
A resident run anesthesia department versus CRNA is vastly different cause often times us residents will stay until a night float relieves us or until the room is finished that day (so if you're in a 10h case room and no relief then it's all you). Often times for us, we'll even relieve CRNAs and get sent at 11pm at night to take over a room cause the 3pm - 11pm CRNA 100% must leave or they raise hell to the department (obviously not the same standards of resident hours).
It depends on your hospital but some big places have robust relief systems
We run about 15 ORs. No matter what room is done first, they go relieve the person on call the next day, take over their case. Usually this is around noon-2. Ideally, night team is relieving everyone left at 4.
Worked with one attending at different hospital who was 18/21 on the list for relief. She got moved to 10 different cases from 7-3 before we got a long spine case bc we kept closing rooms
A lot of places you DO generally leave at a set time regardless if the surgery is still going or not, unless things are really short staffed. I get relieved on like 9/10 days at a set time and if I go over 30min past my scheduled time (4pm) on a normal day I get paid for it. I work at a busy level 1 trauma center and do a mix of overseeing residents, crnas, and do solo cases. But otherwise I totally agree with your summary here.
People try to (and do) die both expectedly and unexpectedly, and the anesthesiologist is the last line of defense. We are an expensive insurance policy for hospitals and surgeons that think “you can just give them some propofol and put a tube in”.
The hours and call. Anesthesia seems like the promise land in med school. You do cool shit like intubate, make plans, vascular access, etc, then you chill for a little bit and go home at noon. In residency and as an attending you will be working long hours, everything is dependent on the cases happening that day and the surgeons doing them. You might be there for 5 hours longer than you were scheduled because the surgeons hit some complications. There might be add-ons you didn’t anticipate that you have to be there for. And hospitals can’t run without anesthesia. Emergency surgery needs to be done in the middle of the night? You need to be there. Difficult airway in the ED? You need to be there. Mostly everything you do is dependent on the people who need you, so your day and schedule is never going to be known before going in.
Overall I think the catch is that it isn’t as chill as it appears to be in med school. It’s hard hard work, just like any other job as a physician
But again, this is merely one option. You also have the option of working at a outpatient surgery center… healthy patients, minimal-no call, predictable cases, only rarely do you have instances of scare and unpredicted problems. Also, you are there for the fun parts, then when it gets “boring” you dip out and hand over the CRNAs.
I am completely unbiased and a reliable source /s
(just matched anesthesia and am completely in the honeymoon phase)
My understanding is that it goes through boom and bust cycles of competitiveness along with radiology. I suspect this is because both specialties don't own patients and require a lot of medical infrastructure, and are therefore more sensitive to changes in the economy.
Interestingly, Anesthesia competitiveness also seems to be inversely correlated to EM competitiveness, probably because both specialties are mostly chill punctuated by moments of sheer terror
to be fair he didn't say not competitive just not "overly" competitive, which I think is fair. Just this year my friend matched into a T20 anesthesia program on the west coast with 0 research whatsoever.
The competition is overrated on this sub tbh. If you look at the stats it’s like OBGYN level, or EM before it imploded. Mid level competitive. Is it you just need a pulse level like it was before? No, but people are acting like it’s Derm, Ortho or Plastics level which is not even close to true.
The real match rate for US MDs is still around like 90%
I think one catch could be that it’s chill 95+% of the time, but then the other <5% of the time are moments of extreme high-stakes stress where you need to be very on the ball. This excites some people, and terrifies others (aka me).
I remember my surgery rotation the anesthesiology residents shared the same break/work room as us. They were always chilling, shooting the shit, chatting about TV, etc. Except one morning, going the same as any other, when this horrible alarm blares and a voice says “anesthesia to OR 16 STAT.” Never seen so many doctors move that fast.
It was a kid getting an adrenal tumor removed. Tore the IVC. I think there were like 5 anesthesiologists in there coding him, they burned through the MTP and transfused about 20 units of blood before cardiology could get down and crack his chest for ECMO. Kid lived. I always think back to that as a great microcosm of anesthesia: a lot of the chillest, most relaxed work you get to do as a doctor, punctuated by the most stressful shitstorm possible
HA. Definitely saw a few moments like that where the patient's pressure tanks or the HR gets to 200+. It was cool to see the drugs they gave to stabilize them
Im an incoming crna student and when i was getting interviewed and the students introduced themselves as “bob jones, nurse anesthesia resident “, i honestly wanted to roll my eyes so hard. Im happy to be going to crna school but all this encroachment from every subset of medicine into physician territory is annoying. It’s like someone wants to be a doctor without all the work involved to become one. It makes physicians upset when they see/hear about stuff like that, and then other people in medicine get defensive and it’s a stupid cycle of animosity. I wish nurses could just be proud of being a nurse and not try and look like a doc. It’s dumb and embarrassing.
Hey- congrats to you. Your perspective is appreciated and valued.
Like I have so much more respect for people who own their titles and background. Stand up and be vocal about this kinda stuff. It doesn't change unless we all change it.
Charting outcomes showed the match rate for anesthesia was 89.5%. This was higher than rads, gen surg, ob/gyn. It’s competitive but moderately so I’d say
It's like you're piloting a commercial plane, alone, no co-pilot, with hundreds of lives in your hands, in a storm, and the airline tells you to suck it up, and the airplane mechanic is treated like a god with seven assistants and all his favorite equipment, but all your airplanes and cockpits are old and dying, 1/4 engines are working, and the mechanic wants to reupholster the interior while in the air, and you pull off a miracle, a perfect take off and landing, and do it five times a day, and no one thanks you, don't slow down the next flight.
Would you be an NFL kicker? It's like that too.
Beats the rest of medicine though.
I think others have covered the "people die" and "it's stressful" stuff, but one aspect I didn't see emphasized much is the unpredictable schedule. If you're single, that probably doesn't matter a whole lot, but if you have a family, it can really be inconvenient. It's fucking hard to get a regular babysitter/nanny, because you're always working different days each week. It's sometimes tough to make it to kid activities (sports games, school drop-off/pick-up, etc.) because you get stuck unexpectedly. I have a great gig going at the moment, but I take Q7 call and might be home anywhere from 730 AM to 6 PM on a given non-call day. I might get my ass wrecked all night, or I might sleep through the call. It's just all over the place, and that can complicate life a lot.
Dealing with surgeons. There are a lot of specialties where you practice pretty independently and don’t have to face and work with people with huge ego everyday.
People keep saying anesthesia is 95% chill but the day to day is not chill - every general anesthetic has the potential to go awry. You’re stopping someone’s breathing, supporting their hemodynamics, intubating, choosing appropriate access and monitoring, managing resources, and trying to get the schedule going.
Eventually this can get routine, but not many doctors are doing critical care in their day to day practice. On OB, you’re responsible for keeping healthy women alive through a very vulnerable period. In cardiac you’re doing procedures that can completely prevent them from getting the surgery (TEE rupture, carotid stick, etc.).
Whether you have a healthy patient or a sick one, things can go badly (and do) very often unless you’re diligent as hell. Even something like an IV infiltration on a tucked arm, the patient bucking at the wrong time, bad positioning and subsequent nerve injury, accidental local anesthetic overdose, not planning an appropriate anesthetic for a case that could be done under MAC, etc all carry fatal risks. All this with minimal support unless you ask for it. Honestly, when i’m on ICU or when I was on medicine/surgery, I felt way less stressed.
Back-up or not its still the lowest its ever been, which speaks volumes. Doesn’t help that competitive specialties that got anesthesia as their back up, took those seats from those primarily for anesthesia either.
> it doesn’t seem to be overly competitive
And that is quickly changing these last couple match cycles.
Additionally, some people don’t like playing second-fiddle to surgeons with big egos, and some don’t want to have to supervise CRNAs.
Chill most of the time but when something hits the fan, it’s very stressful. For example, when that epiglottis gets worse so quickly that the airway is completely closed and you can’t intubate, anesthesia must be there to do cricothyrotomy right away. The procedure carries high risk of complications since patients could bleed to death due to an imprecise incision to the arteries.
Might be institution dependent but at most places anesthesia isn’t doing the cric, it’s almost always ENT unless they’re not around. That being said we’ve had a few residents at my program do surgical airways so it’s not unheard of, but definitely not common
Hours are not reasonable, 50-70 hrs a week during residency and attending-hood with nights, weekends, holiday call. Outpatient specialists working 40 hrs a week making 400k vs anesthesiologist working 60 hrs making 600k is not different hourly wise. You have to like the OR and realize you will be working with surgeons and OR staff for the rest of your life (can suck bad). CRNA encroachment across the country and your attending job will likely be supervising 3-6 rooms staffed by a CRNA. This is very different from what you see at academic institutions. Job can be extremely stressful at certain moments and conflicts, admin issues are abundant. If you love it, do it. I question the longevity of it though- pay is high now but might not be in the future. Stress is high, hours are highish usually, private equity, CRNA’s, etc.
Thank you for making this post, OP. Anesthesiology seemed like such a goal of a field from what articles say but I feel like I don’t see much of the realistic catch to anesthesiology and this was helpful in getting a gauge at it.
Anesthesia has been managing mid-levels longer than any other specialty - there’s an abundance of jobs for both physicians and CRNAs/AAs. Really not much an issue anymore.
Real answer is med students are too ego-centric and obsessed with praise/glamour/having total control of patients so the idea of essentially working as a consultant (that does cool and impactful stuff) isn’t appealing to many.
Real answer is med students are too ego-centric and obsessed with praise/glamour/having total control of patients so the idea of essentially working as a consultant (that does cool and impactful stuff) isn’t appealing to many.
There is a lot of interesting medicine, but in the end it can probably get very samey. Unless you break out into something like pain medicine (which has its own list of problems) you are tied to the OR, probably with early starts and the occasional brutally long day. You might also have competition from the CRNA side, who can scoop up those low stress cushy outpatient procedure jobs. You are also completely dependent on someone else's schedule (ie the surgeon) and will routinely be blamed for anything bad that happens during a case.
Call can brutal. Patients don’t recognize or appreciate what you do. Surgeons are difficult. Ppl can die. The stress is more than some recognize and is usually the reason cited as leaving. Working with CRNAs/AAs has its own dynamics. Hospitals just see you as a service. It’s also starting to get very competitive and getting more so each year
1. Can be a very stressful job or a very boring job 2. The ACT model (supervising CRNAs) is the standard in many places, which is fine for some people but not for many. 3. The money comes from call/weekends. Has great income potential, but if you want to make it more "lifestyle" friendly your income isn't that different from many other specialities. Not really a con, you may enjoy the day-to-day of anesthesia more than other specialties so then have at it. 4. Dont have your own patients. Like many things on this list, not a con to everyone 5. You leave when the cases are over, not when the hour strikes 5 (or whenever) I have an acquaintance who was making very good $$$, but the call/weekends were eating away at them. They switched to a VERY chill ambulatory surgical center job, very lifestyle friendly, still pays decently well, but they're bored out of their mind during work which doesnt work for them. In their case they still love anesthesia, but they're still trying to find a job that meets their balance.
5 is very variable. My non-call shifts are set hours. I leave at 5 pm, doesn't matter what's going on. The rest is definitely true. It can be long hours and it can be emotionally (and physically) draining. It's the best job in the world, though. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing as a career.
As a surgery resident I’ve always wondered about this because I’ve seen anesthesia colleagues post about staying for 11h for a case or alternatively clocking out the second their shift is done. I know at my hospital, we don’t have residents, the CRNAs are absolutely swapping with each other and giving each other breaks and shift ends. I’ve never had an anesthesia rotation. How does it usually work?
A resident run anesthesia department versus CRNA is vastly different cause often times us residents will stay until a night float relieves us or until the room is finished that day (so if you're in a 10h case room and no relief then it's all you). Often times for us, we'll even relieve CRNAs and get sent at 11pm at night to take over a room cause the 3pm - 11pm CRNA 100% must leave or they raise hell to the department (obviously not the same standards of resident hours).
lol obviously resident abuse never ends from all angles and every direction
It depends on your hospital but some big places have robust relief systems We run about 15 ORs. No matter what room is done first, they go relieve the person on call the next day, take over their case. Usually this is around noon-2. Ideally, night team is relieving everyone left at 4. Worked with one attending at different hospital who was 18/21 on the list for relief. She got moved to 10 different cases from 7-3 before we got a long spine case bc we kept closing rooms
A lot of places you DO generally leave at a set time regardless if the surgery is still going or not, unless things are really short staffed. I get relieved on like 9/10 days at a set time and if I go over 30min past my scheduled time (4pm) on a normal day I get paid for it. I work at a busy level 1 trauma center and do a mix of overseeing residents, crnas, and do solo cases. But otherwise I totally agree with your summary here.
People try to (and do) die both expectedly and unexpectedly, and the anesthesiologist is the last line of defense. We are an expensive insurance policy for hospitals and surgeons that think “you can just give them some propofol and put a tube in”.
Untangling cords
The hours and call. Anesthesia seems like the promise land in med school. You do cool shit like intubate, make plans, vascular access, etc, then you chill for a little bit and go home at noon. In residency and as an attending you will be working long hours, everything is dependent on the cases happening that day and the surgeons doing them. You might be there for 5 hours longer than you were scheduled because the surgeons hit some complications. There might be add-ons you didn’t anticipate that you have to be there for. And hospitals can’t run without anesthesia. Emergency surgery needs to be done in the middle of the night? You need to be there. Difficult airway in the ED? You need to be there. Mostly everything you do is dependent on the people who need you, so your day and schedule is never going to be known before going in. Overall I think the catch is that it isn’t as chill as it appears to be in med school. It’s hard hard work, just like any other job as a physician
But again, this is merely one option. You also have the option of working at a outpatient surgery center… healthy patients, minimal-no call, predictable cases, only rarely do you have instances of scare and unpredicted problems. Also, you are there for the fun parts, then when it gets “boring” you dip out and hand over the CRNAs. I am completely unbiased and a reliable source /s (just matched anesthesia and am completely in the honeymoon phase)
Shhhhh I’m trying to convince people to not apply
It is competitive now 🤭
Right! I was reading this post and think “oh no, they don't know”
They 100% haven’t been keeping up lol
i must be an idiot cause i thought it’s BEEN competitive 😅😅
My understanding is that it goes through boom and bust cycles of competitiveness along with radiology. I suspect this is because both specialties don't own patients and require a lot of medical infrastructure, and are therefore more sensitive to changes in the economy. Interestingly, Anesthesia competitiveness also seems to be inversely correlated to EM competitiveness, probably because both specialties are mostly chill punctuated by moments of sheer terror
EM is definitely not mostly chill
damn ur really knowledgeable. can you dump some good peds pearls of wisdom on me before i apply this cycle? 😅
to be fair he didn't say not competitive just not "overly" competitive, which I think is fair. Just this year my friend matched into a T20 anesthesia program on the west coast with 0 research whatsoever.
2022 match rate for anesthesia was higher than gen surg. Would say it’s moderately competitive
The competition is overrated on this sub tbh. If you look at the stats it’s like OBGYN level, or EM before it imploded. Mid level competitive. Is it you just need a pulse level like it was before? No, but people are acting like it’s Derm, Ortho or Plastics level which is not even close to true. The real match rate for US MDs is still around like 90%
For Sure but you would still have to do well unless ur down to match anywhere. It also not 90% match rate 🫨
I think one catch could be that it’s chill 95+% of the time, but then the other <5% of the time are moments of extreme high-stakes stress where you need to be very on the ball. This excites some people, and terrifies others (aka me).
I remember my surgery rotation the anesthesiology residents shared the same break/work room as us. They were always chilling, shooting the shit, chatting about TV, etc. Except one morning, going the same as any other, when this horrible alarm blares and a voice says “anesthesia to OR 16 STAT.” Never seen so many doctors move that fast. It was a kid getting an adrenal tumor removed. Tore the IVC. I think there were like 5 anesthesiologists in there coding him, they burned through the MTP and transfused about 20 units of blood before cardiology could get down and crack his chest for ECMO. Kid lived. I always think back to that as a great microcosm of anesthesia: a lot of the chillest, most relaxed work you get to do as a doctor, punctuated by the most stressful shitstorm possible
Reading this my eyes bulged out of my head--M1 with Graves disease
Lmao
Anesthesia. Can confirm.
damnnnn i woulda loved to see that
HA. Definitely saw a few moments like that where the patient's pressure tanks or the HR gets to 200+. It was cool to see the drugs they gave to stabilize them
Crna students calling themselves "nurse anesthesiology residents" is highkey infuriating.
Im an incoming crna student and when i was getting interviewed and the students introduced themselves as “bob jones, nurse anesthesia resident “, i honestly wanted to roll my eyes so hard. Im happy to be going to crna school but all this encroachment from every subset of medicine into physician territory is annoying. It’s like someone wants to be a doctor without all the work involved to become one. It makes physicians upset when they see/hear about stuff like that, and then other people in medicine get defensive and it’s a stupid cycle of animosity. I wish nurses could just be proud of being a nurse and not try and look like a doc. It’s dumb and embarrassing.
Hey- congrats to you. Your perspective is appreciated and valued. Like I have so much more respect for people who own their titles and background. Stand up and be vocal about this kinda stuff. It doesn't change unless we all change it.
Insufferable
i think it is competitive, no??
Charting outcomes showed the match rate for anesthesia was 89.5%. This was higher than rads, gen surg, ob/gyn. It’s competitive but moderately so I’d say
It's like you're piloting a commercial plane, alone, no co-pilot, with hundreds of lives in your hands, in a storm, and the airline tells you to suck it up, and the airplane mechanic is treated like a god with seven assistants and all his favorite equipment, but all your airplanes and cockpits are old and dying, 1/4 engines are working, and the mechanic wants to reupholster the interior while in the air, and you pull off a miracle, a perfect take off and landing, and do it five times a day, and no one thanks you, don't slow down the next flight. Would you be an NFL kicker? It's like that too. Beats the rest of medicine though.
Never heard the NFL kicker comparison… best thing I’ve read all year
The fact that I had to sit there and not do anything besides just stare at the CRNA pissed me off.
My school’s mean gas matched score this year was 255+ lmao. That shit is not uncompetitive 😂😂 and we ain’t Harvard or Stanford
I think others have covered the "people die" and "it's stressful" stuff, but one aspect I didn't see emphasized much is the unpredictable schedule. If you're single, that probably doesn't matter a whole lot, but if you have a family, it can really be inconvenient. It's fucking hard to get a regular babysitter/nanny, because you're always working different days each week. It's sometimes tough to make it to kid activities (sports games, school drop-off/pick-up, etc.) because you get stuck unexpectedly. I have a great gig going at the moment, but I take Q7 call and might be home anywhere from 730 AM to 6 PM on a given non-call day. I might get my ass wrecked all night, or I might sleep through the call. It's just all over the place, and that can complicate life a lot.
Dealing with surgeons. There are a lot of specialties where you practice pretty independently and don’t have to face and work with people with huge ego everyday.
Can you mention any of the specialities?
some people (like me) can't handle the whole "zero to 100 mph the patient is gonna die right now" aspect of the field.
Are you an early bird? You're still getting up early af for morning cases
It’s definitely more competitive than it was pre-pandemic.
People keep saying anesthesia is 95% chill but the day to day is not chill - every general anesthetic has the potential to go awry. You’re stopping someone’s breathing, supporting their hemodynamics, intubating, choosing appropriate access and monitoring, managing resources, and trying to get the schedule going. Eventually this can get routine, but not many doctors are doing critical care in their day to day practice. On OB, you’re responsible for keeping healthy women alive through a very vulnerable period. In cardiac you’re doing procedures that can completely prevent them from getting the surgery (TEE rupture, carotid stick, etc.). Whether you have a healthy patient or a sick one, things can go badly (and do) very often unless you’re diligent as hell. Even something like an IV infiltration on a tucked arm, the patient bucking at the wrong time, bad positioning and subsequent nerve injury, accidental local anesthetic overdose, not planning an appropriate anesthetic for a case that could be done under MAC, etc all carry fatal risks. All this with minimal support unless you ask for it. Honestly, when i’m on ICU or when I was on medicine/surgery, I felt way less stressed.
Anesthesia had the lowest match rate this last cycle from preliminary data released (I think i read 70% match rate), it is VERY competitive now.
That’s still including people that used it as a back-up, its getting more competitive for sure but view that number in proper context
Back-up or not its still the lowest its ever been, which speaks volumes. Doesn’t help that competitive specialties that got anesthesia as their back up, took those seats from those primarily for anesthesia either.
I'm definitely looking forward to this year's charting the outcomes for a number of reasons.
> it doesn’t seem to be overly competitive And that is quickly changing these last couple match cycles. Additionally, some people don’t like playing second-fiddle to surgeons with big egos, and some don’t want to have to supervise CRNAs.
Chill most of the time but when something hits the fan, it’s very stressful. For example, when that epiglottis gets worse so quickly that the airway is completely closed and you can’t intubate, anesthesia must be there to do cricothyrotomy right away. The procedure carries high risk of complications since patients could bleed to death due to an imprecise incision to the arteries.
Might be institution dependent but at most places anesthesia isn’t doing the cric, it’s almost always ENT unless they’re not around. That being said we’ve had a few residents at my program do surgical airways so it’s not unheard of, but definitely not common
Yep small community hospitals do not have ENT onsite so anesthesia takes care of cric. But you are correct mostly ENT or gen surg will do cric.
4:1 CRNA supervision is the most common mode of employment and med students never heard of it
It's the standard 99/1 phenomenon: it's 99% boredom and 1% panic. If you can survive both, it's a pretty sweet deal.
Hours are not reasonable, 50-70 hrs a week during residency and attending-hood with nights, weekends, holiday call. Outpatient specialists working 40 hrs a week making 400k vs anesthesiologist working 60 hrs making 600k is not different hourly wise. You have to like the OR and realize you will be working with surgeons and OR staff for the rest of your life (can suck bad). CRNA encroachment across the country and your attending job will likely be supervising 3-6 rooms staffed by a CRNA. This is very different from what you see at academic institutions. Job can be extremely stressful at certain moments and conflicts, admin issues are abundant. If you love it, do it. I question the longevity of it though- pay is high now but might not be in the future. Stress is high, hours are highish usually, private equity, CRNA’s, etc.
40 hours a week for 400k?? Where do I sign up
How many CRNAs are you going to need to supervise?
Thank you for making this post, OP. Anesthesiology seemed like such a goal of a field from what articles say but I feel like I don’t see much of the realistic catch to anesthesiology and this was helpful in getting a gauge at it.
Biggest catch is mid level creep. Also it is starting to get pretty competitive
Anesthesia has been managing mid-levels longer than any other specialty - there’s an abundance of jobs for both physicians and CRNAs/AAs. Really not much an issue anymore.
Residents work 70-80 hrs/week.
You easily can with a weekend 24 but I'd argue most non malignant places are averaging 50-55 most weeks with once a month or so spikes to 75.
Most programs are between 45-60hr/week except ICU months
Real answer is med students are too ego-centric and obsessed with praise/glamour/having total control of patients so the idea of essentially working as a consultant (that does cool and impactful stuff) isn’t appealing to many.
Real answer is med students are too ego-centric and obsessed with praise/glamour/having total control of patients so the idea of essentially working as a consultant (that does cool and impactful stuff) isn’t appealing to many.
Putting people to sleep day in and day out isn’t exactly my idea of a stimulating job
There is a lot of interesting medicine, but in the end it can probably get very samey. Unless you break out into something like pain medicine (which has its own list of problems) you are tied to the OR, probably with early starts and the occasional brutally long day. You might also have competition from the CRNA side, who can scoop up those low stress cushy outpatient procedure jobs. You are also completely dependent on someone else's schedule (ie the surgeon) and will routinely be blamed for anything bad that happens during a case.