<p>I want to major in chemistry in college and hope to become a pediatrician. The only problem is that I get nauseous everytime I see blood. Should I reconsider my career pathway? or is this a common problem that people get over?</p>
<p>first of all, some pediatricians don’t deal with much blood at all… and you should never let some fear get in the way of your life…you have to face your fears at some point in time</p>
<p>It’s not unheard of to get over it. But you will have to get over it if you want to be a doctor, so I would make sure that you have a backup plan. (Not that it’s ever a good idea to not have a backup plan for med school!)</p>
<p>I do know a few people who were squeamish about stuff like that and ended up working in health care. My dad is an anesthesiologist and claims he used to be afraid of hospitals. I guess it depends on how affected you are by the sight of blood and whether or not you think you can work through it. Also, to my (limited) knowledge, there are pediatricians who don’t often deal with blood, so it might not be a major issue.</p>
<p>I think you should go ahead and start taking the necessary courses and then see how you feel after a year or two. You might end up changing your plan anyway. If you decide it’s still something you want to pursue, I would talk to a counselor and see if they have ideas about how to overcome this.</p>
<p>Ummm, kids that pediatricians deal with sometimes hurt themselves and bleed.</p>
<p>You might want to donate blood as a way of easing yourself into occasionally seeing blood (albeit contained in a bag).</p>
<p>You do not have to major in chemistry to do pre-med. Note that chemistry does not have very good job and career prospects if you do not go to medical school (same with biology).</p>
<p>Consider Pharmacy?</p>
<p>My cousin is a new doctor and during undergrad she was extremely uncomfortable with blood, but she decided to get over it by putting herself in many situations involving blood. She’d donate blood, volunteer to take her friends when they were injured, and just developed a better attitude to convince herself that she was not at all afraid of blood. Now, her favorite part of the health care career is all the crazy diseases like flesh eating viruses!</p>
<p>Most get over it as time goes. All doctors have to go to the morgue and see an autopsy at least once in med school, to get them acclimated to seeing bodies. Not all doctors see bloods, but those working in a major hospital would be hard to avoid seeing someone from a crash or whatnot.</p>
<p>My cousin, she is currently in med school in UPenn…and she said they got used to bloods while doing dissections and analyses of cadavers in labs. You specialize into your chosen field only in your last year of med school. Then you intern at a hospital to get more skills in it.</p>