Color blindness and residency.

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I am starting Psychiatry residency this July and I also have red green color blindness. I have done a LOT of research about this online and came up with the following conclusion - it does not matter ( in ANY field of medicine ). BUT, being the "paranoid pain in the butt" that I am , just wanted other people's opinion on this.

So, what do you guys say......do they even check for it ?, Should I volunteer this information to my program ?

Any replies and suggestions highly appreciated.

You should definitely be losing sleep over this.

Originally Posted by ednorton

I am starting Psychiatry residency this July .

that right there says everything one needs to know about this thread

I'm also Reg-Green color blind, and the only time this made a difference in medical school was in histology -- sometimes it was difficult to distinguish the pink vs purple regions on H & E stained specimens. However, eventually I learned different ways to see the important things in specimens that didn't rely on looking for pink vs purple regions. So, I doubt that this would have any effect in any specialty that didn't involve path (like derm or path, itself.)

Originally Posted by ednorton

I am starting Psychiatry residency this July and I also have red green color blindness. I have done a LOT of research about this online and came up with the following conclusion - it does not matter ( in ANY field of medicine ). BUT, being the "paranoid pain in the butt" that I am , just wanted other people's opinion on this.

So, what do you guys say......do they even check for it ?, Should I volunteer this information to my program ?

Any replies and suggestions highly appreciated.

Also color blind. I was screened on my pre-employment physical, and got 1/12 of the Ishihara dot tests correct (this was not news to me.)

In your program, I think you will be fine. As someone mentioned, histology/path could be a problem (though there are color blind pathologists.) I know some surgical fields occasionally review path slides, but that's not career-ending or anything.

I don't think anyone in my program knows I've got deuteranomaly unless I tell them. It's not a big deal at all.

Originally Posted by ednorton

I am starting Psychiatry residency this July and I also have red green color blindness. I have done a LOT of research about this online and came up with the following conclusion - it does not matter ( in ANY field of medicine ). BUT, being the "paranoid pain in the butt" that I am , just wanted other people's opinion on this.

So, what do you guys say......do they even check for it ?, Should I volunteer this information to my program ?

Any replies and suggestions highly appreciated.

The only time it will potentially come up in psych is if you are taking a patient history and they don't recall what medicine they are on and want to describe it for you. There are apps that let you match up colors and shapes of pills, but it won't help you if you can't discern the colors. I also agree histology is a big hurdle for the color blind.

For psych, I doubt it will matter.

I'm a psych resident. I can assure you that this won't be an issue in psych. I have met a color blind psych resident who seemed to be doing fine. I'm not color blind myself, but I can't think of any scenario where distinguishing color was critical to patient care for me.

In fact, if it makes you feel better, I just found this story of a TOTALLY BLIND PSYCHIATRIST. If he can do it, obviously you can.
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/loca...f29b0befa.html

Thanks guys. My program has a policy of waived testing in case of color blindness. I guess I cannot interpret tests based on color by myself.
This of course only applies to the Internal Medicine/Pediatrics rotation during my Intern year.