Stomach turning shadowing

[saveourpens]

So I shadowed a doc in neuro trauma intensive care unit. The first patient we saw I just got real light headed and shortly after had to go to the bathroom to throw up.

There were no disguisting guts shown or anything. The patient was just moaning and kicking around. The doc yelled to see how deaf he is and tapped his head and body with a hammer. I just found the whole scene disturbing.

Towards the end I grew comfortable with the rounding but was just completely light headed the 1st half.

Anyone else have similiar experiences?

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[VTBuc]

So I shadowed a doc in neuro trauma intensive care unit. The first patient we saw I just got real light headed and shortly after had to go to the bathroom to throw up.

There were no disguisting guts shown or anything. The patient was just moaning and kicking around. The doc yelled to see how deaf he is and tapped his head and body with a hammer. I just found the whole scene disturbing.

Towards the end I grew comfortable with the rounding but was just completely light headed the 1st half.

Anyone else have similiar experiences?

My very first time in an Operating Room I passed out. I was there at about 7am and had difficulty sleeping the night before, ate nothing before I went in, and it was my first time wearing a surgical mask. I was re-breathing the same air and the room was very warm. Half-way thru the surgery I just ate crap and fell on top of the tourniquet. I came to a little bit later, ate a donut and drank some sprite in the other room, and came back for another surgery. After that first incident I never had another problem. 🙂

 

[dw2158]

So I shadowed a doc in neuro trauma intensive care unit. The first patient we saw I just got real light headed and shortly after had to go to the bathroom to throw up.

There were no disguisting guts shown or anything. The patient was just moaning and kicking around. The doc yelled to see how deaf he is and tapped his head and body with a hammer. I just found the whole scene disturbing.

Towards the end I grew comfortable with the rounding but was just completely light headed the 1st half.

Anyone else have similiar experiences?

i've never actually thrown up or passed out, but i've come close!

i think it's a good sign that after the early difficulties you were able to handle the rest of the experience just fine. i'm sure LOTS of people start med school being squeamish about one thing or another, but eventually you just learn to see everything for what it is. don't worry about it; just plow through and you'll adjust in time.

 

[bunnity]

I never felt sick in my human hospital job, but my first day observing veterinary surgery I almost hit the floor... one of those "am I going to pass out, puke, or both?" moments. Pretty much since then I've been fine.

I think everyone has an initial threshold for what bothers them, and yours might be a little low, but I think most people can get desensitized so that stuff doesn't bother them anymore. The only way to tell really is to keep shadowing and see how it goes.

Don't feel bad that you had a reaction to something that wasn't the classical blood and guts. Neuro stuff can be really tough... in my hospital most nurses don't stay longer than 6 months to a year in neuro ICU because it is very difficult emotionally / mentally. It's hard seeing another human in such distress / disorientation, and I think it's normal to have a strong reaction to it. That's why, if you work at a hospital for a while, you are forced to separate yourself from your patients so that you can do your job effectively.

Go back and shadow some more, and try other specialties and hospital units out as well. Good luck!

 

[Omni]

If you've helped extricate a victim out of a car accident who was missing the top half of his face and had a brake caliper smashed into the place where the frontal lobe of the brain should have been, nothing can turn your stomach.
That scene was like the Kingda Ka of nasty scenes. Once you ride the Kingda Ka, no other roller coaster will ever feel scary.

 

[Kestrel004]

I was working as a Unit Secretary and I overheard one of the nursing techs talking about watching an I and D. It was a slow period so I asked if I could watch too.

To make matters worse, I did not know what I and D meant at the time, but I knew that a pic-line was supposed to be placed soon and assumed that was what was happening.

Turns out it was a boil being lanced. I stayed the whole time, but definitely started feeling lightheaded while watching.

 

[Abdullaah]

Let me copy and paste from my internship-journal:

Let’s get right into it. First of all, either Tuesday or Thursday last week I made a huge mistake and skipped breakfast. So, I was following a nurse around until we came to this patient, bilingual Hispanic with a huge tummy (keep reading). So, this patient has just had a “gut-octemy” or “gut-oscopy” or something, and she was checking him out. Ok, so first thing I see is this big area dense with patches and bandages from the center of his stomach to his belly-button. All of a sudden she starts removing all of the wrappings, one by one, and there were so many. By the time she got to the last ones, they were practically taped to the body, it started getting gross. It looked like she was peeling off layers of his skin! Then, there it was, this deep, fist-sized red crater in the middle of his stomach. The nurse then proceeded to cleanse it with saline solution, which caused a small stream of blood to erupt from the edges, and she dug her hand in their wiping this patient’s insides. After a few minutes observing this patient’s anatomy, I started getting light-headed and I snuck out and had to sit down. Yeah I know, I tried to man it up, but it was that skipped breakfast… I hope it was the breakfast at least, because I’m going to have to get used to this kind of stuff eventually. Anyway, the patient noticed I was no longer observing and “gave me permission” to watch, so I came for a couple min then went back to sit. I kind of felt inactive for the rest of that shift.

After shadowing at the post-surgical unit they posted me in mother/baby. There, I also almost passed out when I was instructed to keep a pacifier in the baby's mouth while the nurse ever so slowly drew blood from his backhand. I actually don't understand why I get faint, I mean, the scenes didn't bug me that much (I hyped up the journal entry a bit). Its just that all of a sudden I start sweating a lot, then everything gets real bright, blurry, and white, and I get real light headed and have to sit down. I guess I didn't know how wimpy I was 😳. What's strange is that it even happens when there is not much of a disturbing scene at all like at an out-patient clinic where the doc isn't operating at all. I think that it has to do with being in a new environment and also, I guess, excessive standing.

 

[URHere]

Try shadowing a few more times before you make too much of your one experience. I had one rotation in med school where I scrubbed in on several spinal surgeries, and I absolutely hated them. Standing still for hours in a lead vest/thyroid shield, watching the patient howl in pain and vomit into a basin really wasn't a pleasant experience and I often felt like I was on the brink of passing out. When I got to my trauma rotation, I discovered that I wasn't incompatible with surgery...just some types of neurosurgery.

 

[CCLCMer]

So I shadowed a doc in neuro trauma intensive care unit. The first patient we saw I just got real light headed and shortly after had to go to the bathroom to throw up.

There were no disguisting guts shown or anything. The patient was just moaning and kicking around. The doc yelled to see how deaf he is and tapped his head and body with a hammer. I just found the whole scene disturbing.

Towards the end I grew comfortable with the rounding but was just completely light headed the 1st half.

Anyone else have similiar experiences?

Don't be too hard on yourself. When they're first starting out, a lot of people have trouble seeing patients' innards on the outside where they don't belong. But you really do get desensitized over time. My school uses prosections on unpreserved cadavers for our first year anatomy course. You would probably not be surprised to learn that they smell pretty bad, and they also bleed all over the place. The first week, we were studying the heart, and the anatomists had all the cadavers' chests cracked wide open. I had to go out in the hall and sit down a few times. Later in the year there was a cadaver with skin peeling off its hands. That made me a little nauseated too.

By the time I got to my surgery rotation, it didn't bother me anymore. (And the good news is that surgery patients are alive, so they don't smell nearly as bad!) Today I watched a full autopsy at the county coroner's. It stunk really bad, and it was very bloody too, but I was fine. So were the other two students who were watching it with me. We were helping the forensic pathologist cut up the organs, so it's not like we were in the back of the room somewhere. I could never have assisted with an autopsy as a first year med student, never mind as a pre-med.

Like someone else already said, just keep shadowing. Also, don't feel like you have to be a hero. If things get too intense for you, go sit out in the hall for a few minutes until you feel better.

 

[feenotype]

I almost passed out the first time I saw an abortion when shadowing an Ob/Gyn , probably because there was a lot of blood and it was so disturbing. My legs got really weak , everything became white and blurry and started to sound fuzzy..so I went out of the room to sit down for a while and when I went back to watch some more operations I was completely fine.

 

[Mattabet]

Yeah, the whole trying to maintain some eye contact and normal conversation while I can also see some of the patients inner workings took some getting used to.

"Uh huh, so Billy's birthday was good? Okay, this wound is definitely weeping a little bit around the edges..."

 

[evelknieveljaja]

i had a similar experience. i was shadowing a doctor in the Neuro ICU. i haven't eaten breakfast in around 8 years and was running around that morning. so i went around with him and residents on a rotation but all the standing led to me almost passing out. he had to take me to a room and a resident gave me some OJ. was better in a few minutes but a little embarrassing. i will take note of all the standing from now on haha

 

[redlight]

jeez a lot of you guys are shadowing neurosurgeons ... crazy! there are only a few thousand in the country... and they are impossible to get a hold of. the guy i want to shadow has a 1 year waiting list and he isnt famous like dr Quinones and dr Ben Carson (likely because he does spinal neurosurgery and not brain neurosurgery).

anyways i saw a guy who was shot in his genitals and another who was run over by a truck while he rode his bike... lots of blood and screaming and people rushing around but i think i had too much adrenaline pumping to feel anything but excitement

 

[TurkSurg]

So I shadowed a doc in neuro trauma intensive care unit. The first patient we saw I just got real light headed and shortly after had to go to the bathroom to throw up.

There were no disguisting guts shown or anything. The patient was just moaning and kicking around. The doc yelled to see how deaf he is and tapped his head and body with a hammer. I just found the whole scene disturbing.

Towards the end I grew comfortable with the rounding but was just completely light headed the 1st half.

Anyone else have similiar experiences?

In my first day I saw appendicitis surgery. It was cool to watch it... and right after that they had this 6 hour long liver surgery so I watched it all with excitement (without even going to lunch; although I was hungry). The next day I just wanted to see more and more surgeries 🙂

 

[YouNeverKnow22]

i can't say I've ever felt sick watching surgeries, then again I love surgery........try watching a uterus getting removed

 

[TurkSurg]

i can't say I've ever felt sick watching surgeries, then again I love surgery........try watching a uterus getting removed

I saw the removal of cyst near the uterus. IMO, I think one of the hardest surgeries is esophagus surgery....idk if any of you guys have seen it.

 

[sully677]

We did a trach on a cadaver the other day...Does that count as gross?🙂

 

[schrizto]

I saw this lady get a sponge bath against her will on a hospital bed while she was screaming "Blood! Blood!". She had been in the bed for days and was going to the bathroom in the bed... it was uncomfortable to watch, but not really that bad.

 

[runrunrudolph1]

my first surgery I ever saw I passed out and the surgeon caught me haha. It was a C-section and they were pulling the skin apart with a LOT of force and they nicked an artery and a little blood shot across the room (they got it fast though) and I started to feel dizzy, I told the nurse next to me that I needed to leave and get some water but she told me that " NO! I was going to miss the best part!" So I closed my eyes and opened them again and this time the surgeon was staring at me and he turned, dropped his instruments and turned to me with his arms open. I don't remember anything else except I woke up and he asked me if it was ok to return to his surgery...

Ive seen a ton of surgeries since then and Ive been ok...

 

[red10]

I've watching colonoscopies done and especially in a hot room, its made me pretty light headed a couple times. I also watched a bronchoscopy and I felt a little sick to my stomach because of the gagging gurgling noises.

I also almost fainted when a doctor was examining my dad's leg (he completely severed the quad tendon) because the doc was able to push his hand about 2 inches into my dad's leg right above the knee because it was so full of blood and the tendon was snapped. I asked for water but the doc just said no and told me to lay down on the bed for a while.
He also told me that when he was in med school observing an ER trauma he passed out and a nurse dragged him out by his feet, and he turned out to be a surgeon! So there's always hope!