Any residents or attendings that hated dissection?

[heartsink]

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Hey all,

I thought about putting this in the premed forum but my question is specifically addressed to those that "made it to the other side" of med school. I'm finishing up my sciences and prepping for the mcat but today i'm dissecting cat ovaries and testes and the idea of it is mildly unnerving.

I can do it, but i'm mentally preparing myself for the much more intense experiences to come and i have to imagine there are current psych residents or psychiatrists who just didn't care for delivering babies, doing surgeries, or cutting into testicles.

I'm definitely interested in more in medicine than just mental health, but I can't be the only one passionate about this path that isn't passionate about cutting into gonads, right? How did the rest of you fare during med school when you weren't that jazzed about what you were doing at the time? Was it just a matter of being immersed in it to the point of being inured?

 

[Shikima]

I liked it. Need to jump through the hoops to go where you want to in the end.

 

[clausewitz2]

I think pretty much regardless of your specialty of interest, there will be large chunks of time in you medical school experience that will be boring and awful. Some feel this way about the entire first two years. I can almost guarantee at the very least that there will be at least one rotation that you cannot stand and hate with the hate of a thousand suns. If you are lucky it will be a short one.

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

I think that is a good definition of the medical school experience. I can’t think of anything that exposes you to a more diverse/perverse cadre of uncomfortable and unfamiliar situations. If anyone out there can honestly say that they liked every bit of it, I would like to meet you. Such a person would have to develop an immense amount of credibility for me not to think they were lying.

 

[manly_man246]

Found it to be sorta meh. But gross anatomy is a lot different from surgery - I loved my ENT rotations and even parts of gen surg. Cadaver lab is an essential part of your education and training though, and if you choose to change specialties halfway through your residency it may because you realize that you actually enjoyed that surgical rotation so much more now that you're sitting around talking to folks all day long. Medical school is amazing, I'm glad I didn't come in set on one thing and just try to "get through" the rest, I feel more well-rounded and competent as I head toward residency interviews this fall. I certainly never cared for delivering babies or managing CHF/DKA though, but I still tried to get the most out of it that I could because I'm paying for it and because it will come in handy some day.

 

[Psychotic]

Hey all,

I thought about putting this in the premed forum but my question is specifically addressed to those that "made it to the other side" of med school. I'm finishing up my sciences and prepping for the mcat but today i'm dissecting cat ovaries and testes and the idea of it is mildly unnerving.

I can do it, but i'm mentally preparing myself for the much more intense experiences to come and i have to imagine there are current psych residents or psychiatrists who just didn't care for delivering babies, doing surgeries, or cutting into testicles.

I'm definitely interested in more in medicine than just mental health, but I can't be the only one passionate about this path that isn't passionate about cutting into gonads, right? How did the rest of you fare during med school when you weren't that jazzed about what you were doing at the time? Was it just a matter of being immersed in it to the point of being inured?

Most pre-meds seem to sweat anatomy, and most wonder what they were so worried about once they are through with it. I dreaded OB, and it turned out OK, again no big deal. I liked aspects of surgery, but I realized I would not be happy in that "club" at all, although at one point I did some ortho research after MS1.

I liked anatomy. It is not that significant a chunk of med school to sweat it. What you really need to understand is how miserable the medicine rotations can be, and those are a much bigger chunk of med school, and they will continue to follow you even in your intern year of a psych residency.

I would argue that if you find you enjoy your medicine rotations, you should go into it, but you should understand that most people hate it, even the ones who hold their nose and go into IM with the goal of some specialty at the end of the tunnel. Comparatively, anatomy was a piece of cake compared to medicine, for me and for many of my med school peers.

 

[Frazier]

Liked anatomy lab a lot.
Liked operations on surgery rotation.

Glad to have the chance to add them to my pile of experiences, but will be fine w/o them in my career.

 

[shan564]

I hated anatomy, and that was probably one of the weakest parts of my Step 1 score. I kinda liked surgery, but wasn't a huge fan, and my grades in surgery weren't as good as in other subjects. I cringe at the thought of ever doing Ob/gyn again.

Part of life is doing things you don't want to do in order to get what you want. After all, the surgeons have to do a psych rotation too. You can't possibly be passionate about everything you do.

Also, FYI, you won't be cutting into any live humans in med school unless you are particularly interested in doing that. You'll probably be holding a retractor.

 

[Armadillos]

Was pretty sure I would do psych going into medical school, I absolutely hated every second of anatomy lab and was miserable (because of the academic stress) dissecting itself was actually pretty neat. Now in retrospect I think anatomy lab is probably one of the most unique experiences I've had in my life and am super thankful to have been given that opportunity. Its like Im part of some ancient secret society.

This didn't set in until I went to one of those "Bodies" exhibits which a bunch of friends who are really smart, but in non-biology fields, they were all in awe of getting to see all the anatomy. I was surprised that despite sucking at anatomy I could tell them hundreds of random facts about any body system, answer pretty much every question they had and have some sort of patient related anecdote.

As far as hands on stuff during medschool, you can generally avoid it if you want, but I would advise you to try not to because I think experiencing some of the hands on things makes your knowledge more well rounded and helps you to carry yourself a little more confidently as a physician in stressful situations (procedural or not).

I absolutely never sought out procedural experiences, but never turned one down when offered as medstudent/intern. So I've put in a couple IVs, put foleys in men/women, placed NG tubes, gotten a blood gas, I&D abscess, suture small lacerations, put a shoulder back in, intubated half a dozen times, made a couple surgical incisions, helped catch babies then deliver the placenta, done US paracentesis, and of course retracted and closed skin for a million surgeries. Never did a central line or LP, somehow never came up for me. Even though I never plan on doing any of the above ever again as a psychiatrist, I think it makes me a better physician to have done them before.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

I honestly don't remember that much about gross anatomy lab. It wasn't my favorite thing, but it was nowhere near the hardest part of medical school. I have some vague fond memories, though, of memorizing (successfully!) all the features in my Rohan textbook and watching and re-watching dissection videos done by our anatomy professor. Unfortunately the brachial plexus is now a distant memory.

Low points for me in medical school -- an IM rotation with people who were hard to get along with and peds (I just don't like peds). I did ob/gyn first, so I was actually pretty enthusiastic about all of it, although scared. I did surgery last in 3rd year and was perhaps a bit checked out. I was good at helping them round quickly, and I had a partner who wanted to scrub way more than me, so it worked out well. I spent a good deal of my time studying for the shelf.

So cat gonads -- attached to a cat who was killed for dissection? If so, I wouldn't be a fan. If obtained through sterilization, it could be interesting.

 

[shan564]

As far as hands on stuff during medschool, you can generally avoid it if you want, but I would advise you to try not to because I think experiencing some of the hands on things makes your knowledge more well rounded and helps you to carry yourself a little more confidently as a physician in stressful situations (procedural or not).

This is a great point. You have a unique opportunity to get a unique experience, and you should snatch every unique opportunity you get in med school. I ended up regretting a lot of the experiences I missed because I thought that an extra few hours of Step 2 studying outweighed the opportunity to, say, ride along in an airplane ambulance going to remote areas.

As an intern, I tried to make up for that where possible. I was about halfway through my intern year when I finally realized that I should be seeking the opportunity to do procedures rather than avoiding them. Now I feel like I could do the LP myself if I get stuck in the unlikely situation where a patient with meningitis gets inadvertently gets admitted to a psych facility and there's no internist on site at that moment.

 

[Ceke2002]

Okay this may be somewhat of a stupid question, but why on earth are you guys dissecting cat ovaries and testicles? You have cadavers for that, don't you? I mean I know you don't have an endless supply of cadavers, but I just assumed that when you were done you put things back where they belong ready for the next student. Yeah, I'm confused, I've only ever really seen footage of autopsies.

 

[Armadillos]

The small mammal dissection is in general during undergrad, in medical school you step up to exclusively human dissection. Human cadavers are a commodity must undergrads don't get assess to. Also dissection and autopsy are very different.

 

[Ceke2002]

The small mammal dissection is in general during undergrad, in medical school you step up to exclusively human dissection. Human cadavers are a commodity must undergrads don't get assess to. Also dissection and autopsy are very different.

Oh, okay, that makes sense. Thanks 🙂