Rotation with the Medical Examiner

[Slevin]

Anyone do an elective rotation with a medical examiner? What did you think of it?

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[turkeyjerky]

I did, it was easy as hell but a giant waste of time. Not nearly as cool or exciting as I thought it would be.

 

[Slevin]

I was thinking about going back home and doing one with the NYC ME, it would give me time to be at home for a wile and I was hoping to see some cool things

 

[DrBowtie]

They definitely have some sweet teaching files of oddities they see. It's really chill though as another poster stated.

 

[OveractiveBrain]

I was thinking about going back home and doing one with the NYC ME, it would give me time to be at home for a wile and I was hoping to see some cool things

BORRRRRIIIIINNNNNNGGGG. And I liked the pathologist I worked with, too. I did it for a day, and wanted to poke my eyes out. It did last only about 4 hours a day, though, most of which was looking at slides.

If you want to take the rotation as a joke (to have time off, or to be near family) then its ideal. Location and hospital specific, of course.

 

[DD214_DOC]

Don't do it. I spent a month with a ME back home to stay near the house. Every day was forensic autopsies on people who had been suicidized, murderized, or decomposified. It sort of fubars your world view when you open up a body bag and see a maggot-covered partially-skeletonized smelly corpse or a greenish marbalized bloated humany-thing with its tongue partially protruding. If the sight isn't bad enough, you then get to stick syringes into its eyeballs and cut out all of its vital organs.

 

[OveractiveBrain]

Don't do it. I spent a month with a ME back home to stay near the house. Every day was forensic autopsies on people who had been suicidized, murderized, or decomposified. It sort of fubars your world view when you open up a body bag and see a maggot-covered partially-skeletonized smelly corpse or a greenish marbalized bloated humany-thing with its tongue partially protruding. If the sight isn't bad enough, you then get to stick syringes into its eyeballs and cut out all of its vital organs.

THAT would have been awesome. At least its different!

 

[DD214_DOC]

THAT would have been awesome.

It really wasn't. Doing an autopsy on a 16 year old girl who had her brains blown out by a spree killer right after an old man whose head was blown-off by a shotgun wasn't very awesome.

 

[OveractiveBrain]

It really wasn't. Doing an autopsy on a 16 year old girl who had her brains blown out by a spree killer right after an old man whose head was blown-off by a shotgun wasn't very awesome.

Different strokes. I guess I'd rather see the DEAD girl with her face blown off then the LIVE girl with her face blown off (attempted murder [fail] suicide [success] with a shotgun) in the SICU.

 

[MelindaWarner]

I would love to do this. If anyone can guess the reference in my username, you'll figure out that I definitely want to be a medical examiner. And I agree. I would rather see a dead person with grotesque injuries than a live person with the same afflictions.