I just finished my month of pediatric surgery. This was, um, a learning experience.

Don't get me wrong -- I like kids. I even hope to operate on them once I'm in practice. Pediatric pathology is interesting, the cases are challenging, the relationships rewarding. But frankly (I've concluded), pediatric surgeons are weird. The best way I can put it: they are some of the most peculiar and particular surgeons I've ever operated with. They're peculiar because they all do things differently in the OR; they're particular because they insist on following their own idiosyncrasies, no matter what.

It's hard to fully appreciate their oddity unless you operate with them as a resident, but I've been reprimanded for things that I haven't given a second-thought since third-year of med school. How I scrub my fingers; how I drape the patient; how I hold the Bovie. One surgeon wants you to scratch the surface of the skin and use cut on the Bovie to get through dermis; another surgeon wants scalpel to hypodermis. One surgeon wants slider knots; another only wants square. One surgeon uses towel clamps; another uses Ioban; another uses sticky paper. One surgeon wants one Steri-Strip on the incision; another wants three.

I realize that, for the non-surgical reader, most of this sounds very esoteric and non-sensical. And it is. The very fact that there exists so many different ways to do the same thing points to the lack of superiority of any one technique. And yet -- there I stood at the operating table, neck bent, eyes down, hands motionless, listening quietly to the attending surgeon as he lectures me under his breath.