Erica Sutton, MD, was nearly a victim of her chosen profession. She
was too young of a surgeon for her shoulders to ache and her hands to
throb. Or so she thought. "The pain began during my residency — I
hadn't even begun my laparoscopic fellowship," recalls the associate pro-
fessor of general surgery at University of Louisville (Ky.) School of
Medicine. "It became obvious that I had to figure out how to operate
comfortably so my career wasn't over before it started."
Like many surgeons, Dr. Sutton focused on patient care at the
expense of her own well-being. That attitude, thankfully, is changing
as more surgeons are realizing that in order to take care of their
patients, they must first take care of themselves.
Paying attention to posture
Surgeons spend years
learning surgical tech-
niques — how to han-
dle instruments, how
to make a stitch, how
to expose tissue —
with very little
instruction or empha-
sis placed on proper
ergonomics and pos-
ture, according to
Michael Lidsky, MD, a
gastrointestinal sur-
geon at Duke Cancer
Center in Durham,
N.C. "We're taught
how to be a surgeon,
1 0 2 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9
