If you were to rank all the medical specialties by the arduousness of the training required, the technical complexity and high stress of the interventions involved, and the harshness of the working hours, cardiothoracic surgery would be near or at the top of anyone's list. In this episode, cardiac surgeon and Chair of the Department of Surgery at Columbia University Medical Center Craig Smith, MD takes us into the heart and mind of a physician who regularly cracks open a person's chest t...