I’m a senior medical student who spent today shadowing a gynecologist. Fully half of the women whom I saw with the gynecologist (a woman) politely asked me not to stay in the room when asked.
This doesn’t upset me–it’s totally their choice–but it makes me curious. I don’t think that half of women would refuse to have a male gynecologist, but by refusing a male student, it seems like they expect men to learn gynecology without seeing patients. This doesn’t make sense to me, so I think I’m totally off-base. What’s the actual reason, here?
I’ve added a poll, but I’d really like to hear where I’ve gone wrong, too!
It is possible that the women who asked you to step out of the room would have asked the same of a female student; i.e., their problem may have been in having an unfamiliar person present, not your gender specifically.
To answer your question, I slightly prefer having female gynecologists but have had male ones in the past, and in either case would not object to a student of either gender being present during my exam.
I don’t know that half of all women would refuse to have a male gynecologist, but the women who strongly prefer women as gynecologists will show up more frequently than average in the pool of patients belonging to a woman gynecologist.
Thought the second:
There’s a world of difference between expecting you to learn gynecology without seeing patients, and preferring that you learn gynecology without examining ME.
I would not be surprised to find that a significant number of the patients who asked you not to stay in the room, would have declined to have a female medical student stay given the same opportunity. Gynecology is embarassing enough without an audience.
Thought the third:
The way the opportunity was phrased very likely made it easy for women to express a preference for you to go away.
I can’t blame women for preferring a female GYN. I prefer going to male doctors, at least for potentially embarassing conditions/exams. Like, I would prefer not to have a female proctologist (although small hands is a plus).
The OB office I used to go to is at a teaching hospital*, and honestly it can be weird when a student is there - male or female. I let them stay since I know they have to learn, but I prefer when they’re not there. It’s a group practice and the gender divide between doctors is about 50/50, and I never minded getting a male doctor. It’s just kind of disconcerting having someone there just silently watching everything. At least the doctor you can chat with and feel comfortable with - the student you’ll probably never see again.
Some of the women I’m sure just didn’t want a male student or doctor, but I’d bet a lot just didn’t want a student in there at all.
*I still go to the same practice, just a different location that’s not in a teaching hospital - I didn’t leave b/c of the teaching aspect, just wanted to deliver at this particular hospital.
I think a little like you, Speaker for the Dead. I don’t get it because I don’t have any issues about anyone seeing my genitals. From what I’ve heard from my friends and such though is that many of them do have issues with seeing the gynecologist and/or seeing a female one only.
For the ones who are just plain uncomfortable with seeing the gynecologist, or perhaps have an embarrassing issue to talk about, they would have asked you to leave regardless of your gender. Then the ones who really only want to discuss things with a female, they would ask you to leave based on their gender.
I think the important thing to take away from this is that yes, some women are uncomfortable, and it doesn’t matter why as much as it matters that you realize it is an issue and are sensitive to it and understanding.
That’s the rub (no pun intended), I think. Everyone I (and every other medical student) examines is a “ME.” This isn’t a criticism; it’s actually part of my question. Is this likely people’s logic, whether the student is male or female?
I would have no problem with a female OB/GYN resident, but some random medical student? No thanks.
Also, I actively refuse to see male OB/GYNs just 'cus I do (and I’ve had cause to do so). Interestingly, my request to only see female OB/GYNs has never been an issue or treated with surprise, even.
FWIW, I’m going to be giving birth in a couple of months and the practice that I’m going to is all women, and they trade off deliverys with another group of all women; however, in the event that something goes wrong, you get the OB you get and he could be a man. I have no problem with that, whatsoever. I believe the exact words I told my Dr. were “I don’t care if the OB is Attila the Hun with his gang of other Huns - if they’re required to get the kid out safely, do it.”
As to how medical students are supposed to get experience - well, participate in your Well Woman teaching for one. Practice on each other, for another. And don’t bother saying that medical students would never do such a thing - I worked at a medical school for a long, long time.
I ticked the ‘don’t care’ box, but on reflection, I think the idea of having more than one person in the room would make me feel a bit like a museum exhibit. I really don’t relish the idea of having a group of people staring down my fanny (British, not US, fanny).
It’s also dehumanizing (not the perfect word, but the best I could come up with) enough that at some point it doesn’t matter who’s doing the prodding, just get it over with.
I recently had a hysterectomy and had a female gynecologist (my regular, who did the surgery), a female resident (who helped) and a male intern (who checked up on me afterward [actually they all did, but he was the first each morning]). I had absolutely no problem with him asking anything he needed or checking anything he felt needed checking exactly for the reason you mentioned: he can’t learn the job if he doesn’t get a chance to practice with real people. But, like I said, I found the whole thing dehumanizing (the nonchalance of the hospital staff makes the whole thing surreal), that my body seemed to not be mine for a while, so there’s no such thing as personal space or boundaries.
badbadrubberpiggy mentioned being uncomfortable with a student watching that they’d never see again. I actually can feel more detached with someone I’ll never see again. (I’ll never see the resident and intern I saw in the hospital again, but I’ll still regularly have to see my GYN).
I admit that I have a slight preference for female OB/GYNs but am certainly willing to see a male doc. Certainly I’m willing to have students in the room. But I am big into learning myself so I would enjoy listening to the doc explaining things to the student even if I was on the exam table.
My OB/Gyn was male (I now use a general practice nurse practitioner) and I loved him. When I gave birth I was loved by the staff because they were doing teaching and I’d let anyone see what was going on, examine my daughter or talk to me about my experiences. I was told that was pretty unusual.
I agree though, there is a difference between expecting you to learn, and expecting you to learn on me. I don’t care, but there is a difference.
The only time I would ever consider going to a male gyno is if I had some acute issue that really, really needs to be addressed ASAP and that’s who can get me in soonest. I mean, call me a prude, but I like to keep the number of men who have seen my crotch at its current level. As for med students, I’m all for being their practice patient if I have something useful/interesting for them to learn–I’ve had I don’t know how many students of both sexes listen to my heart murmur–but typically my crotch is not at all medically interesting and is thus off-limits. You can get your standard normal pap smear experience from standardized patients, thank you ever so much.
I have a slight preference for female doctors, especially GYNs, even though all the doctors I see right now are male. I gave birth in the Lackland Air Force Base hospital, which is a teaching hospital. I didn’t get a choice…I had up to half a dozen med students peering up what I had previously thought of as my private parts for 18 hours. And while I’m OK with having one student shadowing my doctor, I think that having five to seven at a time is a bit much. I’d be OK with a male student during a GYN visit nowadays…but at the time I was quite modest.
I think that a lot of people, myself included, prefer not to have anyone else in the room during an exam or procedure. Usually I’ve given my permission for a student to be in the room, when I’ve been asked, but I find that I’m considerably more ill at ease with a student there. I’ve generally built up a trusting relationship with my doctor, and I don’t have any such relationship with a student. Plus, I’ve always wondered if I needed all the procedures that happened when I gave birth, or whether the students needed to see some of those procedures done. Remember, this was a military hospital.
My husband does not want any female seeing his genital or anal region except for me. And yes, that includes doctors. He’ll see a male doctor, but not a female one, for any problems in that area.
I had a male gynecologist once. He was very nice, probably the best one I ever saw.
Gynecology, however, is not a spectator sport. I don’t want any unnecessary personnel of either gender staring at my crotch. I know you have to learn, but I’d rather it not be with me.
Standardized patients are people the medical school pays to come in and be practice patients for the whole class so the students all get the same exam experience. Mostly they’re used to let the students get used to the act of performing an exam, and to get a feel for what’s normal.
The gyno standardized patient when DoctorJ was in school was a lady named Peggy, who had been doing this for years. It takes a special sort of person to go in and get 30 pap smears in an afternoon–I only hope Peggy was better-paid than the other standardized patients.
My first pap, at the age of 16, was observed by around half a dozen students of mixed gender. One random medical student nowadays would be nothing compared to that.
