RossFisher

The "mister" is an honorary title. Originally physicians would have a barber (hence the barber's pole) do the cutting as it was too menial and dirty for them. Some insightful physicians realised they could do a better job of cutting as they understood the anatomy and disease better and so began doing the surgery. Their colleagues used the term "Mister" in a derogatory way but the surgeons carried on and we now wear our ordinary name, every man is Mr, as a badge of honour in Medicine.

It's old fashioned but tradition and history has put us where we are so I am happy to respect that.

yes I do. every operation is on a SOMEBODY, not just a thing. Sometimes we almost forget that but we have to change our mindset from how you would be if I gave you the knife, we have to be a bit detached and focus on the task rather than letting emotion have a big part on what we are doing.

There can be no greater trust by a parent in them letting you take their child off and do potential harm and that weighs on us, but we don't usually show many people. Similarly, that look in a parent's eyes when you go out to tell them everything has gone well...again, completely humbling but totally uplifting.

How do we cope? Most days, fine. Occasionally a little less well. I've sat in dark rooms sobbing with the pressure, but I've also had days where I've had to keep a lid on it from saying, "you know, what we did today was absolutely AWESOME".

It's something we learn as part of our training and hopefully keep learning.

middle shelf of the oven 180C/350F/Gas 4 30-40 mins

Virtually no medical indication under the age of five save recurrent urinary tract infection. Our colleagues in North America are slowly changing their practice to come into the same line as European Paediatric Surgeons. I don't see good medical evidence for routine neonatal circumcision.

The prime influence in North America is so that boys look like their dads.

And it goes without saying that I completely disagree with female circumcision

depends on what one thinks is exciting.

when I operate on new born babies with congenital malformations the amazing thing is that when the problem is fixed, they are cured forever! That's pretty humbling and at the same time exciting.

sometimes the exciting thing is how tiny the babies are that we operate on. surgery on a real live person who weight 700g is pretty amazing too.

sometimes the technical challenge of the surgery makes it exciting in that when doing a large tumour resection where the tumour is stuck to major organs, if we make a mistake...that can make it exciting too.

so all of those are exciting for different reasons.

So the MOST exciting? I think tracheo-oesophageal fistula ligation and repair of oesophageal atresia on a 900g baby. that means she was very premature (14 weeks early) and her food pipe (oesophagus) instead of being joined to her stomach had a weird connection from her windpipe (trachea) to the stomach. We operated on her thru a 3cm cut in her chest and joined the pipes the right way round that were about 3mm in diameter. And she made a complete recovery and when she comes to see me in clinic she's just a normal beautiful little girl.

All thanks to our amazing neonatologists, anaesthetists, theatre team, neonatal nursing team and pharmacists.