<p>I need some advice/guidance. I have always gotten good grades, and am a determined and hard working individual. I love people and want to put these good attributes towards the benefit of others. I think the best way to do this is by becoming a doctor. I want to be a doctor. </p>
<p>Now here is where I am confused. Like most people, I am uncomfortable around blood, needles, that type of stuff. Now I have always thought that everyone is naturally like this, uncomfortable around that type of stuff, that that is human nature. And that as a person spends more and more time around gory stuff, they become accustomed to it. What do you guys think? Is this the case? Or are there people who are naturally comfortable cutting people open, and those are the ones who become doctors? If so, then I guess I should look into pursuing something else, because I am not one of those. </p>
<p>So anyone who can give some insight into this, it'd be greatly appreciated:) Thanks</p>
<p>I can’t speak from any real experience, but personally I’d be a little freaked out by someone who was totally comfortable cutting a person open the first time they did it!</p>
<p>Maybe you can find some sort of volunteer internship or summer program in medicine that would allow you to explore the limits of your tolerance. That way, you can sort of get your feet wet before you actually commit to medical school.</p>
<p>I don’t see how you can be a doctor if you’re afraid of bodily fluids…but I guess there are some specialties that aren’t very invasive like Optometry or Psychiatry. But you’d still be around blood and guts in medical school.</p>
<p>In medical school you get used to it. As a pediatrician I try never to do anything that will hurt or traumatize the child, but sometimes you have to do what is needed. I could never have been a surgeon, although I very much value their skills and expertise.</p>
<p>I’d feel uncomfortable cutting somebody open if I didn’t know what I were doing. However, if I knew what were going on it’d look like another procedure to me. As long as a person has the ability to not be bothered by the details (such as gore, blood, bodily fluids, etc), I’ve found that it becomes just another protocol, so to speak. For example, I work in a lab with rats and occasionally we have to kill them. At first it bothered me, but the PhD student I work with explained that these are like models (vehicles, if you will) that must be used for experimental data (pertaining to cells). With this perspective it didn’t bother me so much. Now, I know this isn’t the same as cutting open a human, but I think that once you understand what’s going on (and the human body is fascinating - it’d be fun to learn what’s going on even with just cadavers…though it’ll be unnerving at first I gander), and are able to distance yourself from the “details”, you should be fine.</p>
<p>Well, my friend tells a funny story about his first surgical rotation as a med student. After his very first surgery was over, he was outside in the hallway outside the OR suite and one of older, very experienced surgical nurses came up to him and asked how he was doing. He said he was fine. The nurse said good, but would you mind taking 2 steps back. He was puzzled, but complied. Now his back was against the wall. She asked again if he was OK. He replied he was fine—and promptly passed out. She leaned her shoulder into him and eased him down so he didn’t crack his head on the floor.</p>
<p>Apparently he wasn’t the first nor last med student to faint after his first surgery.</p>
<p>And that fainting med student–he’s now a surgeon.</p>
<p>D1 said in her EMT-I class the first class session was 70 minutes of the goriest, bloodiest accident footage you can imagine. (Driver’s ed movies have nothing on this!) A number of her classmates got ill, but the reason why the instructors showed this film was to help desensitize students to blood and gore and stuff they might eventually be facing.
However, one guy had to drop out of the class because he had an usually strong vasovagal response (he fainted at the sight of blood and needles) which never improved over the several weeks of desensitization practice.</p>
<p>So, yeah, most people aren’t comfortable cutting into people. I think it would be a bad sign if you were. But you can learn to be less uncomfortable around blood and gore and bodily fluids of all kinds. Repeated exposure (and I mean that in all senses of the word)
to it helps you learn to deal with it.</p>
<p>Naturally, I am not afraid of blood needles or any of that stuff. I saw a open heart surgery and easily walked out without fainting. Actually, I ate 40 minutes after lol. If you honestly believe you can’t handle that type of stuff, just don’t go into that type of specialty.</p>
<p>For the record, it never phased me. However, as an EMT I have worked with nurses on the job almost 30 years, who still can’t stand the smell of blood! Trust me the smell is worse than the sight. They just work through it. My attending in the ER told me, everyone has something. For him it’s feces, for me it’s vommit. I don’t think I will ever get over the first patient I had like that. He had the emesis basin in his hands and insisted on vommiting all over the floor! Yup, never going to be comfortable around that smell…</p>
<p>Sensitization happens quickly by and large. Everyone has that one thing that still makes them a little queasy, but people usually even make it through that without passing out or vomiting.</p>
<p>The only people I’ve heard who passed out were people who just swear that they were on their feet too long or had gone too long without eating.</p>
<p>We had to do dissections in bio lab last semester, and I felt uncomfortable doing dissections on rat specimens (even though they were dead, so it would probably be worse if I had to perform incisions on living things). It doesn’t bother me so much that I have to walk out of the room, but it does make me feel a bit lightheaded while I’m performing it. I’m wondering if this is a red flag that going into medicine isn’t for me. I hope it’s something that I’ll get desensitized to. Does anyone have any pointers about this?</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with being a bit squeemish at the start. In anatomy lab i watched at least half a dozen people break down in tears when we had to expose our cadaver’s faces and remove parts of them. Some of them left the room, some of them stayed there and just watched, and some still kept working. We had a policy that you were allowed to step out of anatomy lab if you needed to and the professor would meet with students to counsel them if needed (in addition to the mental health services being available). You definitely get a little used to it but I think the people who handle it best are really just reframing their thoughts, not actually being ok with it per se, much like the rat example above.</p>
<p>The tears were all girls but there were plenty of guys who were visibly uncomfortable or openly admitted feeling that way.</p>
<p>Let me reframe it to show that you are in fact just ok with it and reframing it into something positive. Are you telling me you enjoy mutilating another human body? You want to rip apart, disfigure, and ultimately destroy an innocent person who is only trying to help you? I could paint a picture of myself in anatomy lab that made me sound like I had absolutely no regard for human existence, but that’s not what was happening and that’s not how we or the amazing people who donate their bodies think of it. We were learning. We were being taught by someone who despite having no formal medical training taught us more about the human body and ourselves than any professor we will have. I admit that I think the human body and all of its parts is among the most incredible things to grace the universe, and I enjoyed learning what I did in anatomy, but if there was another way to learn this material as effectively as cadaveric dissection allows, we would be using it.</p>