Question for the ladies here. When going seeing a gynecologist for a pap smear or pelvic exam, have you ever had a male student or intern present? How did it happen? How did you feel during the process. Did the student had a full view of the examination? Did you regret it? Please share stories.
What a fascinating question.
You first.
I’m not going to speak for women, but when a medical professional performs an examination on me, the thought of “this is a woman/man/child” doesn’t occur to me, I trust their skills, their objectivity, their medical knowledge, and that’s all that matters.
Yes, but do you prefer an audience ?
I have been sent to a male gynaecologist/specialist, but that’s not what you’re asking about.
I find I would have a strict ‘no spectator’ policy, regarding the gynaecologist. At the dentist, in the hospital, the Dr’s office, sure. But the gynaecologist? Sorry, but just no!
Prefer? No. But I’d be okay with it, assuming they aren’t being weird about it somehow.
I’d say yes but its always embarrassing when they point and laugh.
It wasn’t at the gynecologist, but one time my GP happened to have one of my former classmates as the assisting student. He was a lot more nervous about performing the examination than I was: to me being examined medically by someone I also knew socially was normal. The GP pointed out that since anybody other than lab doctors will eventually have to treat a neighbor, the sooner the assisting started getting used to it the better.
I had a male Ob/Gyn for 20 years (he got promoted to head of the hospital and stopped seeing patients). I gave birth to 3 boys. I had 5 different kidney surgeries.
Who looks at my hoohah during medical procedures was always the last thing I thought about. The many times there were students watching my only thought was “I hope they learned something that will help another patient some day.”
I’ve never had a student or any other unrelated party observe a pap smear but I did have a male medical student on rotation at the labor and delivery unit at the hospital attend the birth of my child. I honestly didn’t care. It was hard to care about anything other than getting my baby out. The next day, when a nurse came in to check on me and the baby, she asked how I was and I responded that I had just had a baby. She said that she knows because she was there. I didn’t even recognize her.
What’s the point of having the student there if he doesn’t get a full view? Isn’t that the point of him observing, that he gets to see how it’s all done?
Yup. My original OB/GYN worked with a teaching hospital, and would occasionally have a student working with him for practical experience, and then when I was a military dependent, the base hospital also trained independent duty corpsmen, and they did an OB/GYN rotation because they might end up treating either female military or locals as good publicity. When I was having pain issues in 1994 I went to see the GYN to discover one of my ovarian cysts had gone from pea sized to ping pong ball sized in 30 days [I had my annual poke n prod the month previous so there was an actual baseline for me thye were following - had PCOS all my adult life] so they called in several more docs including a couple oncologists, and by the end of the afternoon I had been ‘spelunked’ by about a dozen assorted people [I commented that it was the most action I had gotten since my husband deployed. GOt snickers from some of the low on the totem pole nurses but the big cheese docs didn’t seem amused.] Post op would care took about 3 months thanks to also having lymph glands removed from my left groin pit leafing a 4 inch by half an inch by an inch and some deep wound site healing so I was having weekly appointments. I had a bunch of corpsmen in training every visit for various crotch type inspections [internal and external wound care] and I got asked if I would volunteer to be given pelvic and rectal exams by the trainees because it pretty much didn’t bother me.
I have gotten a number of compliments by the techs in imaging - I do what they ask, when they ask with no complaining because I discovered long ago that getting it over fast was good and the more you complain and screw around, the longer whatever obnoxious procedure will take. I think the funnest thing was actually watching my first lap tubal ligation, though being awake for the parathyroid section was sort of cool too.
It’s happened to me, for a routine pap smear. I couldn’t have cared less.
If by fascinating you mean skeevy I agree.
Pretty sure he did. Though it didn’t read as skeevy to me until “please share stories.”
There really isn’t a male equivalent so it’s hard for me to relate. But I’ve had female doctors in urology so one more probably wouldn’t make a difference. I’d probably draw the line if they wanted to take a selfie with me.
nm
I’ve had a medical student present when the doctor checked my prostate, and he took a turn. Male vs. female wouldn’t have bothered me. It’s when they start asking, “Is it supposed to be like that?” that things get a little awkward.
Dude registers specifically to ask women to share stories of strange men looking at their vaginas. Yeah, that’s not weird.
Points, I suppose, for not posting it in ATMB or Cafe Society.