Surgery asks for a very deep commitment, so it certainly can feel almost disloyal to experience these feelings. However, having these thoughts doesn’t automatically mean you need to walk away from this field. It does mean it’s worth understanding if you are being pushed or pulled in this direction.  What are you feeling about the work, the pace, the autonomy, or is it something else? Are you deeply unhappy with the work you do now on a day to day, or are you more fascinated by something else?

I’d caution against framing this as a binary choice too early. Maybe you can give yourself permission to explore in small, low-risk ways. That might mean carving out time to talk to colleagues in adjacent fields, or even noticing whether this feeling is consistent or fluctuates between different rotations. Is this a global problem, or more of a sporadic and situation-specific issue?

At the same time, be honest with yourself about what parts of surgery still resonate, if any. If the operating room consistently feels like something you’re enduring rather than choosing, that’s important to absorb honestly and fully.

When you say that you spend more energy thinking about problems outside of the OR, does this mean that you are still passionate about understanding surgical pathology? Or are you more drawn to other parts of medicine in general?  Or are you feeling uninspired and repulsed by all of it, and thinking of issues completely outside of the entire field?

If you feel both pushed and pulled, and cannot see a happy future in any subspecialty, it is not a failure to move on to a new and exciting path for yourself. If you are still deeply excited by many aspects of surgery and there’s a sub specialty that calls to you, it may be worthwhile to continue towards this future.

You’ve built something valuable, regardless of what you ultimately decide. If you do end up deciding to leave, the question then should not be, ‘was it a waste?’—it’s ‘what do I want to do with the skills and perspective I’ve gained?’”

Koji Park, MD