BOSTON, MA – The board of directors of Massachusetts General Hospital announced Monday that the prestigious center plans to offer residency training in the theory and practice of holding retractors in surgery.
The first of its kind, the four-year program will allow graduating medical students dedicated access to a wide variety of surgeons, retractors, and procedures, providing an environment where the craft of retractor holding can be honed in ways not previously possible.
“For over a century, young doctors have been doing the vital job of holding open the surgical field, allowing surgeons to operate with clear vision,” said Dr. Mark Gardiner, the program’s recently-appointed director, in a press release. “But there have been no avenues for growth within this practice, no movement toward recognizing and treating this as its own nascent field of medicine. At Mass General, we’re changing that.”
The program’s creation paves the way for the emergence of a new breed of physicians, dubbed “retractorist” by its proponents. It also comes as welcome vindication for surgical residents and medical students who have come to know the lure of retractor holding but have never, until now, seen a viable future in it.
“To me, this is an answered prayer,” says fourth-year medical student Jamie Schalow of Northwestern University Medical School. “I fell in love with retractor holding in my third year, when I fourth-assisted on an abdominal aneurysm. I held a Balfour retractor for two and a half hours. By the end, my hands were so cramped I couldn’t hold a fork until the next day. It was heady stuff. That’s the moment. That’s when I knew.”
Having secured ACGME certification for the program last year, Mass General will start its inaugural class of future retractorists this July. Interviews for the fourteen PGY-1 positions are well underway.
Subir Rakesh, a graduating medical student from Arkansas, is concerned about the intense competition for entry into the revolutionary program. “It takes more than boards scores and a high GPA to get into this field,” says Rakesh. “I’m just hoping I can make an impression during the interview by demonstrating some retractor techniques I’ve learned over the years. You know, the overhand, the sidebar, the through-and-through, the inverted Hasselhoff, the French horn. And of course the full extension ski pole. That’s where your hand is in the surgical field but your head is almost under the table. Very tricky.”
With several other hospitals around the country considering opening retractor medicine programs of their own, it is expected the movement will garner enough interest to draw hundreds of new doctors away from more established fields such as general surgery.
Katie Blonovich of Baltimore, MD is a prime example. “A few months after I started my surgery internship, I realized that operating on people wasn’t my passion. It turns out I had only gone into it for the retracting.”
With the advent of retractor medicine as a self-realized field, Blonovich is looking beyond surgery. “Now I want to follow my heart and do the things that led me to medicine in the first place. And that means transferring out of this godforsaken hell of an internship and into something more meaningful, like holding skin and muscle back with long, sharp pieces of metal for hours at a time with a surgeon berating me and telling me I’m doing it wrong. Man, that’s the life.”
Go for it! You can do it!!!
I call this painting “Valuable Surgical Experience – an Intern’s Perspective”.
Add piles of redundant paperwork, and I’m in!
We call it surgical training in the UK!
My favorite is when I was holding a army navy for hernia repair. The surgeon grabbed my hand and said “here hold it here.” 3 minutes goes by and he grabs my hand again moves it 6 inches laterally and says “I SAID HOLD IT HERE.” Fuck that guy.
Holding the retractor for a vaginal hysterectomy. More fun than should be allowed.
How are you how are your studies going on
Try that for 35 years..
I did that residency! It’s so Zen
If you can’t skin, you can at least hold a leg…
My thoughts exactly. It’s a self retaining retractor. Maybe a deaver or Harrington…
Oh yes, no worse assignment than retractor holder on a carotid endarterectomy. Hold this army/navy for 30 min while I sew this graft on. DONT MOVE!! Oh crap, got a couple of bleeders, another 10 minutes of holding. OR the ruptured AAA, no time for a retractor so let’s get a bunch of people in here to retract with their hands. OR, this is a redo-CABG and I’m gonna need a heart holder. Don’t move while I sew that coronary. Hand is numb anyway because the heart is frozen.
I don’t
RTL
Retract
Tan
Laundry
ROFL! That WAS my surgical intern rotation! The best is the Vag hyst. Retracting whilst standing on tippy toes with your arm draped across the patient’s groin for hours with zero visual of the operation. I would choose clinics over that everytime. :)
That’s what I need – perfect new job!
not retractor-related; but in PA school I had to hold the camera for a late-in-the day total colectomy with take-down of adhesions…the attending thought it would be a good case to teach the resident, so I stood on a stool for 7 hours (case started at 4p) holding the camera in that semi-football cradle while the resident painstakingly took down adhesions which had glued the entire large colon to the abdominal wall…and this, being laparoscopic, was done by someone who was, let’s just say, not quite facile with the instruments. oy!! my aching back! I do have to say, to my credit, I did not once get the verbal slap, your DRIFTING!” which I got on so many (yaaaaaawn) endless bariatric case
hahahahha
I don’t! I don’t!!
Nice job for you Narelle Lintern or Steph Yau?
I’m not sure why you would hold a balfour for two or three hours, unless the self-retaining part of it wasn’t understood! Lol
This position is already filled.
It’s called the first assistant. Lol.
Doesn’t everyone?
I will be changing my profession soon. Any monkey can do this! I’m thinking Wall St! Any idiot
can do that!
lol I can teach this one! 40 years on the end of a deavor
So funny… My left quad falls asleep now during surgery…am I getting old or retracting too much?
Isn’t that what those tiny little bungee cords are for?
Matthew Tanis, maybe you could employee the “Tanis pannus” for such a residency.
Brilliant! Now I know what to pursue for my next degree. Hahaha!!!
Now the term Retracterologist has a lineage lol
Halarious I hope this is a joke…
Holding retractors was such bullshit in med school. Oh yeah, it’s part of “education”…
Katie Anderson
I can’t explain in words how much I’m dreading my surgery clerkship.
Love it lol!!
It’s easy with robotic surgery!
I remember retracting during a bariatric surgery for four hours while standing on one foot balanced on a stool. My back still hurts thinking about it!
Retracting. The only time in my life that I fell asleep standing up!
Do they make more money than pediatric hospitalists?
Better take back that statement. Ie RETRACT!
You have to be kidding me! A program to hold retractors? Well, I guess I’ll be safe in my job for some time to come. Haha!
Ok this one is funny Saad Mohammad
Abraham Pathak Elias Shaya
Ha … Love to know what the inverted Hasselhof retractor holding technique actually involves! I think I’ll work on my berating skills – is there a course for this?
Ha … Love to know what the inverted Hasselhof retractor holding technique actually involves! I think I’ll work on my berating skills – is there a course for this?
Hilarious.
Hilarious.