Academic

Patients v. Medical Students: A Provocative Discussion.

By Ann Bartow

One of my favorite law profs sent me a link to a medical student discussion board, where a very long thread started off with this post:

From some personal experience and hearing stories from others, there seems to be a trend where male students are often being asked to leave during a Gyn visit. This seems unfair, especially to those of us interested in ObGyn. At what point do the patient’s wishes get trumped by the need to train students?

What about interns/residents? I just wondered to what extent (if any) this was an issue. I’m already seeing that female students are getting to do a lot more paps, bimanual exams, etc than the male students. As someone interested in ObGyn, this is very discouraging. How the hell am I supposed to learn if I’m standing out in the hall?

I’m on the road, so I’ll use that as my excuse for raising this without doing any analysis, but in truth I have a lot of complicated feelings about the issue that I need to untangle at some point, so even if I had more time I still might punt. In any event, click the link and read the thread if you are interested.

–Ann Bartow

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on December 05, 2008 (boomark / email).