Even though I was able to perform a few pelvic examinations during my Emergency Medicine rotation, I was able to practice and improve my technique during this ObGyn rotation. The time spent in the clinic was particularly helpful, where I was able to perform a lot of pelvic examinations. In majority of the cases, it was not an emergency visit and I had more time and a better opportunity to learn. I became skilled at performing pelvic examinations as painlessly as I could manage, communicate with the patient throughout, and to visualize the cervix without difficulty. Once the cervix was visualized, it was fairly easy to obtain cultures and PAP smears.
Furthermore, I was also able to manage new types of patients during this rotation, in particular pregnant patients. In those cases, not only do you have to manage the patient in front of you, but also the patient-to-be. I have never been pregnancy before myself, and therefore could not know exactly what those women were going through. It was important to introduce myself to the patient early on, while they were still in triage, to start building a provider (to be) and patient relationship. It was also particularly important to obtain permission to observe/assist in the delivery. Some women said yes, and some women said no. Even though sometimes hearing no was disappointing as I only had 3 Ob on-call shifts, the decision is always up to the patient. Those women were already in so much pain, about to bring new life into the world, they did not need another reason to worry about.
My most memorable experience on this rotation was the first c-section that I scrubbed into. It was an emergent c-section that happened during the night right before I was about to fall asleep in the on-call room. The attending was debating whether or not to let me scrub in, but the decision went into my favor once I mentioned that I just came from my surgery rotation. Since this was an emergent procedure, dissection through the body layers was very quick. Then, while I was watching in disbelief, a baby boy was pulled out. It’s a good thing that I had a mask covering my face, because my facial expressions were priceless. Even though I came from surgery and scrubbed in to numerous surgeries, I will never forget this experience. I was smiling from ear to ear, incredibly happy for the new mom and dad.
After these 5 weeks, I feel confident in my knowledge of obstetrics and gynecologic complains. In fact, this is one of the fields I see myself working in. The knowledge I was able to acquire during this rotation will be applicable in other rotations, at which point I will feel a lot more comfortable and confident. While I might not come across many obstetrics cases in my future rotations, there will certainly be a great number of gynecological ones.
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