What does it take to be an Attending Orthopaedic Surgeon?

I have recently been through a relatively benign stretch of rotations.  Because of this, I have had some time to sit around and ponder some of life's greater questions, such as how much of my life I will have spent learning to become an Orthopaedic Surgeon.  I thought I would share the results.

I cannot really quantify the beginnings of my education, but you first have to think about 13 years of primary and secondary education followed by an undergraduate degree and preparation to take the MCAT before one can ever enter medical school.

Medical school is where I can really begin to quantify the amount of time spent during my education.  For the first two years of school, I was in class or studying for at least 12 hours per day, 6 days per week.  Each semester was 16 weeks long, for a total of 64 weeks of school.  That equals 4,608 hours of class/studying.  In my first two years of medical school, I took approxiately 90 exams, not to mention the rite of passage that is the USMLE Step 1.

Years 3 and 4 are somewhat less vigerous from the standpoint of pure hard-nosed studying.  Although I don't know exactly how many weeks we worked per year, I estimated 45 working weeks per year and 50 hours per week of studying/working/wasting time following residents around the hospital.  That comes out to be a total of 2,250 hours.  As a 3rd/4th year student, I took 6 shelf-style exams and 5 "home grown" clerkship exams, not to mention USMLE Step 2 CS and CK.

The totals for medical school include 104 exams and 6,858 hours studying, in class or "working."

Fast forward  to residency.  We get 3 weeks of vacation per year in my program, which equals 49 working weeks per year.  At 80 hours per week, the total is 19,600 hours, which does not include time preparing for cases or studying for exams.  I will be taking USMLE Step 3 in a few months, and will take 5 Orthopaedic In-Training Examinations throughout my 5 years as a resident.  At the end of my residency training, I plan to do a fellowship and will have to take at least two exams to become board certified in Orthopaedic Surgery.  For the purpose of numbers, let's assume that a fellow will work 49 weeks during their year and will work about 80 hours per week (which could be more/less depending on call, team coverage or research depending on the fellowship).  The total there is 3,920 hours.

The grand totals come up to 30,378 hours of education/studying/working and 112 exams, not to mention research activity and some other things that I might have forgotten about.  Granted, this is not an exact accounting of hours, but I would say it is pretty close and may even be an underestimate.

I'm not sure why it matters, or even what brought the question to mind, but I thought the numbers were interesting.  Deciding to become a physician is not a small commitment, and the amount of training necessary to be theoretically able to cut someone open and put them back together again is extensive.