It's like training for the Olympics practically. There's often little time for any kind of research or scholarly work, and surgeons often do not have any ability to have the very long period of scientific training that basic scientists have. And so surgeons often are ridiculed because they are thought not to be able to do research. Yet many great, interesting, and important advances have come from surgeons. Patients just call you up all the time and say you saved my son's life and all that.
Research is the opposite.
It's just years of frustration. You have to live with experiments that don't work and grants that don't get funded. You have nothing to show for it. It's not an easy life. Well, it's easier to be a physician than to be a researcher.