Do all Medical Students have to do pelvic exams/gynecology?

Question

No inappropriate answers please. I'm just wondering if they all have to even if this is not the area in which they will specialize.

Answer 1

Absolutely.  I promise.  Repeatedly, and often, not only on an anatomically correct life size doll, but on real women as well

Answer 2

Yes, all medical students have to do pelvic exams and learn about gynecology.  Medical schools teach general knowledge about medicine including all surgical and medical specialties.  The board exams cover all these topics.  Specialization is primarily in residency and fellowship, although students may request electives in the specialty of their choice in order to begin the process.

There is generally a short course in common procedures in which students are taught to perform a basic pelvic exam on a practice patient so as to prepare them for a required clinical rotation in obstetrics and gynecology.

Answer 3

You betcha! And you have to go home to the spouse afterwards, too.

It's part of the physical examination. In the classically structured US curriculum, you'll start doing them at the end of your second year, and you'll keep doing them through the clinical rotations in the third and fourth years.

You don't have to like it, you just have to do it.

Before you become a specialist, you have to become a doctor, even if you're on a double-doctorate track and plan on doing nothing but research.

Answer 4

Yes. We had to conduct normal deliveries also.

Answer 5

I read an article in a medical journal years ago that stated the first year medical students had to examine one another as part of lab exercises. That in previous years all the students were males, but this one year they had two female students. One of the females refused to participate in being examined that left all the other male students to examine the one consenting female student.  

The article was written by the male professor, who after meeting with a group of students asked the woman who refused to participate that she clean the coffee pot. The professor defended himself saying that she was not singled out but was the last person leaving the room, and therefore was asked.

You should get a better answer from medical students about their educational experiences.

Answer 6

At my school we learn on dummies, and then we have a group of women who "volunteer" (they get paid very well, but still, I have to call it volunteering for what they do) to get live pelvic exams first by the instructor then by four students each session.

We also have a mandatory one month OB/Gyn rotation, in which time we also do peovic exams. Doesn't matter if you want neurosurgery or family practice, it is part of the curriculum for everyone.