Bitching about the supervisor

1 week into the elective posting and I'm rather disappointed with our supervisor. I can't help but feel that he has no real passion in teaching and was only taking students for a ride, just because it's part of his work requirements or something. And getting us to attend silly meetings - it's either to assauge his guilt and convince himself he's doing something useful, or to show to his fellow colleagues that he's "taking care" of his students.

Thing is, tumour board meetings, morning ward rounds, journal meetings - unfortunately at this moment in time, these are really of no help at all for our academics. It's either so grossly overcrowded with people that we can't see what's going on, or the topics are so technical they'd never be of any practical use to those who are not already surgeons. To add insult to injury, the supervisor doesn't even bother asking us if we understand. At the end of these sessions, he'd sweep right away without small talk even. This happens also during procedural sessions like endoscopy and OTs. No explanations, no discussions, nothing. And I have no idea why we're going for the morning ward rounds. As the HO said today, "If I were your boss, you wouldn't have to come for this." I think they are all intruiged too, about exactly WHAT we were supposed to learn if the supervisor doesn't even discuss any cases. He simply bangs around the patients doing mundane data recording and expects us to be there. For what?

We jolly well could have done without him. IMHO, he has not done his job at all. I'd learn so much more just by talking to patients, checking out their conditions in books, preparing chapters of information and sharing them with my friends. Redundancy, that's what it is, when you don't bother with people you're supposed to teach.

Maybe we're being too passive. But it takes 2 to clap. What are we supposed to do; ask him things that we already can find in the textbook and have him fling the question back at us? Or get more "involved" in patient care by offering to draw the curtains during morning ward rounds and taking bloods? I just don't think we're here for that. If we wanted to set plugs and take bloods we'd go to the emergency department, not here. You get them dime a dozen there. To cap it all, even people that aren't supposed to be our supervisors are more concerned. Maybe it's just the way of surgeons. And that doesn't help in changing my already-downtrodden impression of this bunch of people. This morning's journal meetings was quite apparent enough, the way this group of people behave.

I dearly miss those days when Prof. Low (a most examplary clinician) would be so totally concerned we'd not learn anything during night duty that he'd stay back just to bring us on a separate round. Or him clapping us on the back during OT and abruptly asking ,"What are the different types of goitres, friend?". Or bothering to slow down his OT sessions just to take the trouble to show us the recurrent laryngeal nerve during a thyroidectomy and the deep inguinal ring during a hernial mesh repair.

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