First a reminder to any readers, if you want to add comments to the blog all you need to do is click on the blue word comment after each posting and you can add your comments. Second, what a great night this was for me. I had the opportunity to be one of the senior faculty at a dinner meeting with the purpose of recruiting a new faculty surgeon. Well as usual, there was a generous amount of discussion about the profession of surgery. Naturally, a lot of it was centered around job satisfaction. Everyone wants to be sure that a prospective faculty member gets a favorable impression. However, the fact that the surgeons at the meeting really like what they do is just not possible to be supressed. The central focus in surgery is always about the positive and immediate feedback of a job well done and the tangible results of improved patient care. I found the most interesting discussion of the night to center on the coming change of the critcal care to be provided at one of the hospitals to a system of intensive physician monitoring of patients in the ICU by physicians in a command module with protocols of algorithm driven interventions and patient resuscitaion regimens. Wellas hte old song goes "the times are a changin". Since I don't practice in the hospital to be so affected, I will be able to view the result with less personal emotional investment as to the result of such a new undertaking. All my best dear readers. JTE.