I was wondering if there is any chance for people who “have two left hands”, as the saying goes, to be a medical doctor?
Obviously, there is no way that an individual who has poor eye-hand coordination could be a surgeon or even a dentist. But what about other fields of the medical profession where the emphasis is more on science, interpreting data or maybe social skills?
Is it even possible to study medicine if you are prone to inadvertently knocking over stuff and changing a light bulb is about the most sophisticated home improvement task you can master? (Let’s further assume that, on the other hand, you are exceptionally talented in chemistry, biology, math etc. and also have an outgoing personality who connects very well with people from all walks of life).
Yes, and I’m a living example. I’m fairly clumsy, and I’m training to be a family doctor. Where others picked up things like suturing and other procedures lightning quickly, but I struggle(d) significantly. It comes down to practice and overcoming my aversion to doing things I’m bad at. A doctor can tailor his/her practice to some extent, doing more or fewer procedures as you like. It’s one of the nice parts of Medicine. Ultimately, I intend to go into Palliative Care, which is pretty procedure-poor, thankfully.
That’s interesting. I was thinking more of specialists in internal medicine, cardiologists and neurologists.
I once heard a radio feature about a forensic pathologist. He was asked how he came to choose his specialty. He said that he had always wanted to be a doctor but soon realized that he felt unusually anxious dealing with actual patients. By being a forensic pathologist, he found a way to serve people after their death.
Sanjay Gupta, the author and neurosurgeon, says in one of his books that he feels that does not have especially superior find motor skills. He attributes his success mostly to hours and hours of practice.
I taught a medical student who, while quite coordinated, was blind. And I have known others who were paraplegic. No quadriplegics, but that may just be due to the limits of my anecdotal experience rather than the inherent physical limits of the field.
One of the more clumsy people I’ve met was a chiropractor, I doubt there are many people who are incapable of coordination it’s more a concentration and awareness issue.
You do need to have a basic familiarity in things like putting in central lines, suturing wounds, intubating patients, etc. to graduate med school and often need to have performed a certain number of procedures to graduate residency, but I think with enough practice any healthy person (i.e., someone who doesn’t have a motor or neurological problem that goes beyond normal clumsiness) can learn to be competent at those procedures.
If someone was very clumsy and didn’t make the effort to improve, I could see it causing them to get bad evaluations in med school. A pattern of bad evaluations on rotations could very well lead to them getting kicked out of med school. But, really, if you were making an effort and putting in the time to get better, I think you’d be fine even if you were never one of the best at procedures. Myself, I never did like procedures, but over time I learned to be pretty good at suturing in the emergency department just from being willing to practice on anyone who came in with a laceration.
Med schools do give you a list of “technical standards” before you start that outlines the basic skills that they expect you to be capable of performing: Prerequisites and Requirements - M.D. Program - Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine - Mayo Clinic College of Medicine & Science
If by basic familiarity, you mean “may have sat through a 30 minute sim lab”, then maybe. Otherwise I’d say many medical students graduate with zero experience with central lines and intubations. Speaking as an M4, all my experiences with those procedures come from elective rotations.
I believe this is part of the premise of the TV series Body of Proof. The lead character is a former surgeon who became a pathologist when she suffered nerve damage to her hands.
In Australia I’ve met chiropractors who are medical doctors , having said that the type of American chiropractic garbage you read about is rightfully illegal.
Well, there are chiropractors who actually refer their patients to medical imaging, and I’ve read reports from them in which they assess the results in a not-obviously-crazy way. (I’m not a doctor, but I read a lot of medical reports). I’ve also seen plenty of physicians recommend chiropractors for intractible back pain.
Generally, I’d say the chiropractors who make very, very limited claims about their practice are more-or-less on the level. The ones who make fantastical claims about their ability to promote immune system function and so on - well, they’re not worth much.
Back to the OP - I’d expect clumsy nurses to have a much, much harder time of it than clumsy doctors. Performing routine procedures is one of the things that nurses are for - doctors order them and nurses perform them. (Not that doctors never do the procedures - and for that matter, a Nurse Practitioner can order rather a lot on his/her own. But that’s not a terrible approximation of the breakdown).
I have a friend who’s a medical doctor and he hates the sight of blood and is one of the most uncoordinated people I’ve ever met. Wisely, he went into neurology, and does primarily research.
