Does Surgery Attract Students Who Are More Resistant to Stress?

This article examines perceptions of stress and career choice. One hundred sixty-nine junior students specified what they thought were the two most and two least stressful careers, as well as their own career preferences before and after a 12-week surgical clerkship. The class was divided for analysis into three groups: those who selected careers that they said were A) most stressful (42%), B) least stressful (10%), and C) neither most nor least stressful (48%). Surgery was cited as one of the two most stressful choices by 99% of the class before and 93% after the clerkship. The next most stressful career was internal medicine, cited by 43% before and 35% after the clerkship. The two least stressful careers were dermatology and radiology, cited by approximately 50% of the class before and after the clerkship. Those who chose careers that they said were most stressful had significantly higher self-esteem (p less than 0.05), experienced less unfavorable stress themselves as measured by a 31-item stress scale before and after the clerkship (p less than 0.01), and experienced more favorable (in their view) stress (p less than 0.05) than did the other two groups. Reanalysis of data comparing those who selected surgery with those who did not confirmed findings similar to that of the matched high-stress career group. The study suggests that some students may be able to tolerate stress better and in fact, tend to thrive in an environment that they perceive as stressful, and that such students are more likely to go into a surgical career, which they foresee as one of the most stressful that they can enter.