Why Neurosurgery??

I have been asked before, "Why did you choose to become a neurosurgeon?". To answer that query is complex because there were a number of factors in my decision. First, I had parents who both had college degrees obtained during the depression. That failed to impress me until recently. They both always encouraged me to be my own boss no matter what I did in life. Medicine no longer fits that category, but it did during my practice life.

Once medicine was a done deal, it had to be decided what type to study as a specialty. My first mentor had been our family internist, but I failed to stay interested in this I think in large part due to the lack of stimulating faculty when I took medicine courses. In our eighth quarter of medical school, our class and the one just a quarter ahead of us took neurosurgery for about twelve lectures. At that particular time, Memphis had more neurosurgeons per capita than anywhere in the world. The guiding forces in Neurosurgery nationally were Memphians. Among these were some great teachers, as I was to find out later.

While in one of the earlier lectures given by the head of the department, a man named Francis Murphey, I asked a question. I don't remember what I asked, but Dr. Murphey didn't know the answer. He also said as much to the whole group! Now maybe that had happened in my classes before, but I didn't recall it being the case. No one breathed,as he said, "Mr. Roy, I don't know the answer to your question, but I will have it at our next meeting". After the class more than one person said to me, "It isn't nice to fool the professor". Well, it was done, and I couldn't take it back. It was my first time to hear this man say such but not my last. Sure enough, at the beginning of the next class, he said to the group, "Roy's question last meeting is answered by such and such". I had met the man who epitomized intellectual honesty and continued to do that as long as he lived.

There was still a year to go before I would begin a rotating internship at the city hospital where neurosurgey residents trained. In the last quarter, I had a chance to do a clinical clerkship in several specialties, and I requested neurosurgery to be one of these. It wasn't much except work that no one else wanted to do, but I got to observe a few surgical procedures. The residents were always busy, but they rewarded my interest with some pearls of wisdom on occasion.

After I graduated and became a "real" doctor, I started my rotating internship. These are no longer offered, but I have always been glad that I did mine. Two months of emergency room, two months of ob-gyn, two months of pediatrics, three months of medicine and its specialties, and three months of surgery and its specialties. One month had to be on general surgery. Guess who took two months of neurosurgery? This time I was a notch above a medical student, had more time to see what the residents were up to, and scrub on all the cases. I worked hard at doing things that the residents asked of me, and I was rewarded by being given menial tasks in the operating room. At the end of those two months, the bug had bitten, and all I wanted was to become a resident in neurosurgery. That happened, and that was that. The reason? Good teachers, good residents, a strong neurosurgical environment, and a man that we all wanted to emulate.

Francis Murphey will come another time.