doubts on surgery

[ellie5]

hey im hoping to do medicine at university and very interested in surgery. most people will think im an idiot for putting this down but ive had experiences in the past were i have had to walk out of the theatre because i was feeling faint for relatively ordinary ops... whilst other times were i stayed there for two hours of gory scenes feeling okay. i really love the technical side of surgery and im hoping that me being squeamish at times wont stop me from achieving my dream but id like to know from students who maybe have had these problems or certain embarrassing experiences if it matters. in other words do you just get used to it? is it hard to overcome once you have it around you 24/7, bearing in mind that for me this happens quite randomly and not all the times. ive had some doctors tell me that im stupid for trying to do surgery without being able to sit through an operation and others saying everybody has it once in a while and you soon get over it.
glad of your thoughts

[Chris01]

Ellie

I would be very surprised indeed if such feelings stayed with you for the whole 5 years of a medical degree and then into your higher training. To be honest, if they did, you would struggle with working as any kind of doctor as you have to do procedures involving piercing, scraping, probing or prodding various gory, smelly and infectious by-products of the human body on a daily basis. I think a fair amount of people have brief moments of unease but just focus on the task in hand and get over it.

However, the really key thing to focus on at yours stage is getting into med school. You can focus on the surgery/medicine dilemma in your last year or two, or even whilst working as a junior doctor, so just get in and get on with it first. Now I think about it, at my med school, one or two people got a bit nauseous during the first dissection session, but it didn't stop them coming back next week!

Hope that helps
Chris

[ellie5]

:') thankyou chris. i know you're right, i do have to get into med school before starting to moan about being squeamish but it was a query i thought i should post in a thread and see what answers i got, hopefully that would tell me to stop being stupid and just go for it , which is what i should really be doing :P
you have been of much help
Ellie

[Leo2004]

At med school I have seen some people feel faint/queasy on seeing dissections/prosections or pms. On the whole, everyone has got more used to the viscerality of things as the course has progressed, so don't worry about it! Good luck with applications!