It's Always Sunny in Surgery

We're back! Finally, after a 9 month self-imposed exile during the trifecta of the arrival of additional children 👨‍🍼, MD thesis submission 🎓, and the behemoth that is the FRCS 🥊, we're still standing, we've got the bruises to show for it, and its also right into the middle of our 3rd birthday. So happy birthday to us! 🥳🎉 It's been an eventful time! We talk about the joys of: Country life 🧑...

Brought to you in the middle of ARCP season and family holidays, we get introspective and put ourselves under the microscope, to explore why we ended up down the the route we did 🔬 Why do so many brown people end up in medicine?👳🏾‍♂️ 🩺 Is it hardwired into ethnic DNA?🧬 Cultural and racial differences we can only discuss as friends…😬 Private vs. state education and the relative merits of each...

Don't worry don't worry! Thank you for your concerns for welfare, we've not had a bust-up or lost interest; it's just that life/work/training/families get in our way and are making it increasingly difficult to find time to record. And with it having been ARCP season recently, we set our portfolios to overdrive at the expense of everything else. What starts out as a catch-up devolves into a lengthy...

This week has us scoping out surgeons in the media and our favourite examples. Are these portrayals accurate? Where exactly do they come from? Which ones are based on just pure stereotypes and which ones must be getting that insider information? We discuss: The historical hassle of having to arrange out of hours imaging 🩻 Every surgeon’s dream ward round 🏃🏽‍♂️💨 Art imitating life 🎨 The little...

It has oft been said that “The heart of a lion, the eyes of an eagle, and the hands of a lady maketh the surgeon.” Well then, time to get into it! Who or what are surgeons? What makes us tick? Do we really need the ❤️ of a 🦁, the 👀 of an 🦅 or the 💅of a👩‍💼 to do the job well? Are the characteristics needed to be a surgeon hardwired into us? 🧬 If surgeons were made to wear the Harry Potter so...

We're back after a very lengthy break! In that time we talk about: Snow days and the joys therein ☃️ Moonlighting when you're off the clock / back-street quackery 🦆 Pumping those logbook numbers up! ⬆️ Flirting with disaster...😅 But essentially, we're using this episode to mark our transition into what we have planned for this season, and that is to get all existential and explore who or what ar...

And so, we are closing up again. We discuss some of the other finer points of this specialty series: The ability to amuse oneself is one of the purest joys Audiences in new places Nearly a full house of specialties... ....However, it's harder to remain anonymous in smaller circles We re-affirm our commitment to bringing you solid content... ...But our lives and our jobs are getting more serious no...

This is it folks! This is what we have been building to for the last 6 months! All the uppercuts, all the low blows, all of the urine extracted from orthopaedics 🦴 and all the shade thrown at neurosurgery 🧠 all culminate in this… We are rejoined by listeners 🎧 , contributors 🗣️ and now pundits 🎙️ Michael Ahn (Health Education West Midlands) and Dan Lazenby (Health Education North West) as we co...

This season, we’ve been sat on the sidelines, taking in the action and providing commentary on the action like a Jim Ross, Jerry ‘the King’ Lawler duo (and thus the origin of the title of this episode)… Anyways, later than advertised (as we grapple with Black Wednesday, new hospitals, new firms, kids, m0ar inductions and the joys of mandatory training), we are rolling up our sleeves and getting st...

Just like any major cable television event, here comes another break in the action… This season has been pretty challenging to get trainees from every specialty together. We received some messages from concerned listeners doing a welfare check when the last episode should have been released. Fear not! We’ve not gone anywhere. We just didn’t want to release additional filler episodes whilst we are...

Well, we didn’t expect them to make an appearance during this Royal Rumble of sorts, but they were called out early on and are here to lay the smacketh down! Today we’re joined by Alison Thompson and Sherif Shawer (Health Education North West) as we grapple with O&G. We talk about the highest highs and the lowest lows, and everything in between. Seen by some as an easy target, they’ve definite...

Well that escalated quickly; a few weeks ago we had some specialties trash talking eyes and this week, out of nowhere, a specialty whose name we're not sure how to spell dive into the ring to rise to the challenge. Not strictly a pure surgical specialty, but they have knives 🔪 and they cut eyes 👁️. Some might say they're the envy of us all; they knock out ten times as many cases on a list as the...

This episode is all about the kids; Jamie’s got his hands full with his, leaving Assad with André Cardoso Almeida (Health Education West Midlands) marking the entrance of paediatric surgery into the ring. The circle is complete; the apprentice has become the master! First crossing paths in general surgery during CST when Assad was a junior reg, André has motored through training and recently CCT’d...

It's tough fitting a podcast around life, training, families, kids and crucially for trainees....ARCP season! As Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park so succinctly says "Life...uh...finds a way" . And life has very much found a way to intrude in our recording schedule. So whilst we get around to bringing in more specialties into the ring, here's a bit of a catch up amongst old friends. We talk about: Re...

This week is the turn of ENT 👂👃🗣️and Assad has roped some old friends into the fray. We’re joined by Kate Hamnett and Joe Stansfield (Health Education North West) as we have at them; the good bits, the bad bits, the clinics (are they good or bad?), vertigo 🎭, bewildering anatomy mixed in with a bit of voodoo 🪄. And as you might expect from a bit of a catch up; we get a bit waylaid and off topi...

This episode brings the true heavyweights into the arena; we are joined by Zak Cole-Healey and Basim Dawoud (Health Education North West) as we get our teeth into maxfax! There's lots to unpick; what is it that compels a person to do both dentistry AND medicine?! 🎓 How do you afford it?! 💸 So do maxfax deal with teeth or not? 🦷 (tbh we're still not quite sure...) How do they pick up their skill...

And now, a brief pause in our ongoing specialty series. We bring you our halftime show! Well not really, we have some bits left over from other episodes we want to bring you. Unfortunately, life gets in the way sometimes and whilst we deal with the realities of training and living, sometimes scheduling, recording and editing has to take a backseat. This is still stuff we haven't released, and we w...

This time it's personal: today its the turn of vascular, and Assad has roped in a formidable tag-team: Stacie Hodge (who is legitimately solid) and Mo Elkawafi (both Health Education North West) are in the vascular corner. Are vascular just angry psychopaths? Do they just direct all their wrath from blocked bypasses and failed operations at everyone else? What about those IVDUs? We chat about the...

Today we welcome plastics into the fray, and we're joined by Dan Lazenby and Henry de Berker (Health Education North West). We try and get to the bottom of what makes plastics plastics: are they biding their time to make a fortune in private practice? Are they low-key obsessive compulsive about the things that the rest of us don't care about? Is this an inherent or learned trait? We've heard they'...

Cock rings and banjo strings.... This episode has it all! Probably our most NSFW episode to date, but what were you expecting from urologists?! Email us: surgicalcareersnw@gmail.com Twitter: @NW_surgical (www.twitter.com/NW_surgical) Reddit: u/surgicalcareersNW (www.reddit.com/u/surgicalcareersNW) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy first birthday to us! 🥳 And as a little birthday present to you all, we are releasing probably the funniest episode(s) we've done. This episode heralds the entrance of urology into the arena, and we're joined by some friends across the country! Today we have our guests formed entirely from listeners; Mahmoud Nosseir and Michael Ahn (Health Education West Midlands) are gonna talk to us about...

Today is the day we welcome orthopaedics into the ring! And just like John Cena, they're hench, well-dressed and look good behind the camera. Plus, you can't see them (out of hours anyway!) We're joined by orthopods extraordinaire (and returning guest) Rich Unsworth and Azhar Din (Health Education North West) who started out from the same humble beginnings but fought tooth and nail (pun intended)...

Loud, angry, trash-talking, on the warpath. Not to be messed with. That’s how many have described Steve Austin (the namesake of this episode) but it also seemed quite fitting for general surgery. ‘And that’s the bottom line, cuz Stone Cold said so!’ We’re joined by Caitlin Jordan and Adeeb Rehman (Health Education North West- Mersey) as we talk about: the best bits of general surgery; the worst bi...

We're back, and this season we're bringing the smackdown! We're drafting our friends, colleagues and listeners to tell us why they love the job they do, and why it's the best bit of surgery. We're pitting all the different specialties against each other in a sort of Royal Rumble free-for-all to find out who reigns supreme. Which surgical specialty is the most respected? What specialty do people se...

This episode brings this season to a close...just like its namesake. Get it?! Ok we'll see ourselves out. 22 episodes, 44 weeks, and over a year worth of recording to get our first season done. What a slog it’s been! But an enjoyable one at that. Today we explore: What it's been like actually getting the podcast off the ground 🏗️ Started from the bottom now we here…😏 (according to the stats anywa...