How to learn if you have stomach for medicine

Parents Forum
1

<p>I knew early in high school that I didn't have the stomach for this. Later, I had a friend who was an EMT (I don't know how a 16 year old became an EMT in NY) and was always talking about car crashes where passengers were decapitated and had no problem dealing with the misery and is a PA and an EMT to this very day. I was pretty grossed out and knew this wasn't a direction I had any interest in. Another relative who is a physician worked as a medical examiner and liked it because it was quiet. Clearly there are people with different constitutions and some are suited for this line of work and some aren't. </p>

<p>D is a HS junior, very strong in math and science and loves biology and chemistry, but also might like biotech or chemical engineering. She is squeamish about killing bugs though. She's currently taking AP Bio and I assume she'll do some dissections. She's also a very caring and empathetic person, and I think would make a great physician. </p>

<p>I understand that engineering is a risky choice for a premed. Also, the set of schools for which she would apply would be very different if engineering were the direction she wanted to go. </p>

<p>What can a student do during the summer before senior year to help her learn if medicine is the right field for her. She's definitely interested in the science aspects, but I'm talking about the human aspects, the sights, smells, heartbreak and human tragedy. </p>

<p>I'm afraid that some of the summer programs are too rosy. </p>

<p>Don't misunderstand me. I have the utmost respect for people in the medical professions. I'm just looking for ideas on how a 17 year old can get a meaningful experience to help her in this important decision. </p>

<p>I also know that life is long and it's not a permanent decision, but if she can't handle it, it would be useful to know before putting herself through premed and potentially forgoing engineering.</p>

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<p>The obvious choice is for her to volunteer at a local hospital. While she may not see really graphic scenes, she will see plenty of sick, injured and disabled patients, and she will get a sense of whether she could cope.</p>

<p>My D spent some time volunteering in ER reception and decided that she could not cope with that aspect of medicine. In the same day, she saw an elderly woman die of a stroke, and a teenage girl have a miscarriage on the floor of the waiting room. It was a very unpleasant but eye-opening experience. She also worked in surgery day-stay, which was much better.</p>

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<p>If your d is dedicated to becoming an MD then through clinical and rotations she will become desensitized to the blood and gore and learn to empathize with her patients while helping them medically.</p>

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<p>Son is currently an MS1. Loves it, particularly using the bone saw. But there are others in his class that aren’t crazy about the bone saw or anatomy.</p>

<p>There is a huge difference between being a trauma surgeon/er doc vs. radiology, derm, peds, psych and a hosts of other specialities that don’t involve blood and guts everday. Ithink a more important aspect is the need to get through high school, 4 years undergrad as a premed, applying (which is stressful), 4 more years as a med student, internships, residencies, applying to residency, more training and then getting to practice.</p>

<p>Loans depending on med school ranging up to $250,000+…and then learning how to deal with insurance companies and the new coming changes in healthcare.</p>

<p>Look at the premed forum and it is very enlightening. You will see why so many end up changing their minds. Some med schools recieve 12,000+ apps for a class of 120. It is difficult to get in anywhere and then paying for it is another challenge.</p>

<p>Yes, engineering can be more difficult because it tends to have a lower gpa demographic, however, son’s econ major gpa was lower than his biochem and micro gpa. If he had attended MIT’s biochemical engineering program it would not have hurt his chances at med school. The admissions committee’s don’t exist in a vacuum, they take into consideration everything. But they will not grant leniency for a sub-par gpa. Some schools get so many apps that you need to have a higher gpa to make it past the initial screens.</p>

<p>Undergrad is where she will have the time to explore what she really wants, she doesn’t need to make her mind up now. And it will evolve as time passes.</p>

<p>Son thought he might want to be a physician so took his premed preqs, majored in econ and biochem and micro (2 different schools), but also knows NOW he wants an MD/MBA and has a clearer picture of where he will be in 5, 10, 20 years. But he did not know that until the end of undergrad and now. </p>

<p>MD/Phd candidates are also a different twist on medicine and are very, very different than that of a trauma surgeon (son’s possible speciality).</p>

<p>And yes he did do summer programs for medicine in high school, one at UNC and Duke. It helped but more in the sense he figured out he didn’t want to be an MD/Phd cancer researcher. Did more in college at Harvard and Yale for summers and that too let him see more of what he did and did not want.</p>

<p>Good luck, and she does not have to make up her mind now. She will get more of an idea her first and second years of undergrad and then there will be plenty of opportunities for her to shadow, which she needs tons of anyways for med school apps.</p>

<p>Kat</p>

5

<p>Also, there are many physicians who are happy to have interested students shadow them. Most college premed offices can assist in this but we have found every time we mention to either a physician friend or one of our personal physicians that son is interested in medical school, they enthusiastically offer son the opportunity to shadow them. </p>

<p>Son (college sophomore) plans to do shadowing and volunteer work at our local hospital this summer. He’s had several friends do this and then decide medical school wasn’t for them. This is the main reason that medical schools pretty much require that you have shadowing and medical volunteering hours on your medical school application. Medicine sounds like a great career but the realities of medicine often clash with people’s image of it.</p>

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<p>My daughter shadowed a PA in a local emergency room while in high school. The first patient they saw was an elderly man who’d come in to have an abdominal abcess unpacked and debreeded. The PA told her if she could handle the odor and look of that, she could handle just about anything in medical practice. She found it fascinating. And the next was someone with a pulsating, spurting blood across the room kind of injury…</p>

<p>NONE of the 45 students in her PA graduate school passed out doing human anatomy labs this past summer. On the other hand, several fainted or threw up the first time they practiced injections on each other. It’s hard to predict what will get to you.</p>

<p>Your daughter’s guidance counselor should be able to help her set up a shadowing experience. Try to get into the ER or actual treatment areas, so that she can get into the physical care and exposure to the sights, sounds and smells that practicing medicine involves.</p>

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<p>Nurse here. I’ve found that often student nurses or med students don’t have the “stomach” for blood and gore (and more often, other kinds of body fluids) when they start, but gradually acquire one with time. I wouldn’t make a judgment of fitness to be a doctor based on how a teen might react to that kind of stuff.</p>

<p>And, as stated before, while med students and interns will and should see all manner of maladies and injuries, once they get into residency, they can direct their career to specialties which do not involve a lot of that.</p>

8

<p>I can tell you straight up there is no way I could be a physician or a dentist. It grosses me out to think of looking in other people’s mouths, as well as as touching strangers in all the ways physicians have to.</p>

<p>Yuck.</p>

<p>I am certainly very grateful there are others who do not feel this way.</p>

9

<p>People usually overcome being grossed by this. Most people have this problem. Fortunate few do not.</p>

10

<p>Physician here. So much easier for women than in my day (we were the increasing significant numbers that eased the way for current women). Many good posts above. Physicians (and nurses) come in many different types. Psychiatry is vastly different from Surgery. All have to make it through medical school but enjoy/like/dislike different rotations. Anesthesiologists can be good at their job but faint when a needle hits them (story one staff loved to tell about his colleague). Physicians choose their specialty partly on their tolerances for different aspects of medicine- surgical versus medical worlds, for example. </p>

<p>All parents, historically especially mothers, have to deal with much more grossness on a daily basis dealing with their kids- especially the younger they are. Nurses get stuck with the messes, not physicians. EMTs get things under control before patients make it to the ER. You learn to dissociate yourself from emotional involvement as well. </p>

<p>Don’t worry about your D wanting to major in an engineering field. She should have a major she enjoys and the prerequisites for this overlap a lot with premedical ones, making it easy to choose freshman classes. Only around a third of medical school applicants will get in and many will change their minds and not apply. Good to have a viable alternative and she can change majors once she is in college.</p>

<p>Like in everything else the importance of extracurricular activites has changed for medical school admissions since my day. Being premed is an intention, not a major. Most colleges work for getting into medical schools and will have premed clubs to learn which courses are needed and other things. Don’t worry if she heads off to college without any experiences in medical fields.</p>

<p>She can talk to her your family physician about ways to learn about being a physician. Primary care physicians know physicians in other specialties and can talk to their colleagues about letting her see their world. Volunteering at a hospital will give her a view of some of it, but only one aspect.</p>

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<p>Great points wis75, ICU nurse here and I can take all things gross because when I’m at work I’m my professional self. However, neighbors always make fun of me when something happens to my kids or other neighborhood kids. I always get grossed out at things that are much less intense than what I deal with at work, because I have an emotional connection, certainly to my own children but all the other kids as well. Now, with all the little neighborhood things, once I click over to professional and not mommy, I’m good to go:)
To the OP, have her explore her interests, take the prereqs, shadow etc. – she’ll figure it out with time.</p>

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<p>I was the person who pithed squeamish students’ frogs in biology lab, yet I couldn’t handle the prospect of a career in medicine – not because of lacking the stomach for it but because I knew that I couldn’t handle the lack of sleep that comes at some points in that career. </p>

<p>I know that residents’ hours have been reduced since my time, but they are still considerably greater than those in most other professions, and the consequences of errors made due to sleepiness are greater. (Young investment bankers may work longer hours, but nobody dies when they make a mistake.) </p>

<p>How can prospective medical students figure out whether they have the stamina and ability to cope with sleep deprivation that this career requires?</p>

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<p>Another physician here (pediatrician). Agree with the above. People who KNOW they can’t handle blood, etc shouldn’t go into med school probably, but people who think they might like it will likely become used to the sights and smells they’ll see. Squeamish people need to get through their surgery, OB/GYN and a few other rotations, but they’re usually just fine. I only felt faint twice during med school— the day I had to clean old mens’ feet at the VA hospital, and the day I spent with a podiatrist. Clearly I have a “feet” issue, lol. My job now entails few icky things, though I enjoy them when they come along. I almost went into pediatric critical care which would have been icky paradise. A medical student can choose his/her way eventually and fashion a career that works perfectly, or hopefully close to perfectly, for them. </p>

<p>And I loved the non-pre-med students I went to med school with. So much more interesting. My best friends were a French major, a music major, and an econ major. Cool people and now cool doctors.</p>

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<p>Could she volunteer at a veterinary clinic, maybe even at an emergency after-hours animal clinic? Finding out whether she could stomach seeing dogs and cats with infections and occasionally severed ears/limbs would be helpful. Another option: Is there a funeral home in your area with owners who would/could legally (I don’t know if there’s such a restriction) let her come in and watch them work? This would help her get a sense of how it might feel, emotionally, to dissect a cadaver.</p>

<p>I have several family members who are physicians. Some things they had to do in their first year of med school were: (1) bring in their own large stool samples and examine and test them; (2) practice intubating each other. Both, particularly (2), were unpleasant. As far as cadavers, they dissected the entire body (including reproductive organs and the head), and they started the first month of med school. There was no gradual desensitization.</p>

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<p>One college summer I shared a house with three nurses who worked in the burn unit of the Shrimers Children’s Hospital in Boston (not sure I have the name correct here). Their stories ranged from icky to heart-wrenching, as you can imagine. When I mentioned squeamishly that I found it hard to hear their casework discussed casually over food, they were genuinely surprised. “But why does it upset you? We’re not talking about your child.” These women were compassionate to the core, but did seem to separate out what was – for them – a scientific, practical conversation. Also I was outnumbered 3:1.</p>

<p>I wonder if a student can shadow an adult doing a 2-year Clinical Pastoral Education program? To find out, contact the Chaplaincy Department of a major hospital. Those rotations are for ordained clergy (and sometimes laity) improving their approach to visiting bedside. The clergy don’t do any medical care, obviously, but that activity swirls around the patient. CPE’s focus is the spiritual/emotional side of patients who wish to see them. Also they advocate, sometimes, for very minor adjustments in nursing care, based on what the patient tells them if there are discomforts. </p>

<p>Shadowing CPE’s might be a different lens by which a H.S. student might shadow hospital life. There would certainly be patient confidentiality issues, above all not to name anyone seen out in the larger community. The Head Chaplain might be able to connect a h.s. student with the more appropriate/least emotionally sensitive CPE rotations. Also, there’s the opportunity to talk with sympathetic clergy while walking between beds, to process what’s been seen.</p>

<p>CPE programs are findable in most cities, although not in every hospital. I think you’d have to “sell” the idea of a h.s. shadower to a Head Chaplain.</p>

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<p>Oh yeah, cadavers. Funny that no one thought of that, which is probably because med school types don’t really think of anatomy as the squicky stuff. Yes, anatomy is a first year experience, and patient exposure, more in the third and fourth years.</p>

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<p>Anatomy is the very first class in med school everywhere, but depending on the school, clinical experience is also first year stuff.</p>

<p>D1’s med school places its student into health care setting/clinics starting the first week of med school. So far this year she’s already learned how to do complete physical exams on live patients (including pelvic, prostrate and anal exams), and she and her classmate will be going into various health clinics and actually examining patients and assisting in diagnosing and treating them starting Jan. 10th.</p>

<p>The trend is to place med students into clinical situations sooner rather than later…</p>

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<p>I have worked in hospitals and nursing homes. Currently work on skilled rehab floor. One of the grossest things I have witnessed was a man in acute pain from severe diverticulitis. I was helping the doc insert a nasogastric tube and the patient projectile vomited this nasty green vomit all over the doctor. It went in his face and luckily the doctor has glasses on. I was gagging but the doctor kept on until the tube was inserted. He didn’t flinch. That was unbelievable.</p>

<p>People in healthcare, deal with lots of malodorous fluids etc…that is what I have the hardest time with.</p>

<p>*I am a nurse</p>

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<p>All good stuff. </p>

<p>Times have changed. When I was in med school, we did a lot of the stuff that gets delegated today; drawing blood, starting IV’s, looking at urine, stool, spinal fluid under microscopes to make a right now diagnosis and decision. </p>

<p>IIRC, we did NOT do pelvics as first year students, and I better not be having one done by a first year either. Sorry, but no. </p>

<p>And yes, after you in practice, surgery and psych are very different although in medical school I loved both. surgery is so specific and finite. You are in and out of patients lives pretty quickly, and they usually are cured. Psychiatry is just not like that. </p>

<p>But, you will HEAR “horrible”, traumatizing things all day long in psychiatry too, and I SEE those burn victims for years, not just until the scars heal.</p>

<p>So the other thing you have to figure out is if you have a stomach for chronic suffering.</p>

20

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<p>I think every health care professional has that one thing which just makes them gag. For me, it is respiratory secretions, particularly the infected stuff suctioned out of patients on ventilators in the ICU. When I was a new grad, an older nurse noticed me looking at the suction cannister, holding my hand to my nose (apparently not very discreetly), and looking a little off. She said, “Yep. Lung butter. You’ll get used to it eventually.” </p>

<p>I never did. I can handle every other gross thing but that.</p>

<p>Make sure the kids who are being referred to shadow docs at hospitals spend a little time in the ICU’s in addition to the ER and regular floors. Not only will they see some pretty heavy stuff from a medical point of view, they will get a glimpse of tragedy, of family agony, and the end of life stuff most regular people don’t have to deal with on a daily basis.</p>