There are some professions out there that always leave us wondering how they found their way into that job.
While there are some jobs that not everyone would see for themselves, like dentistry, there are still a fair number of kids who claim they want to be dentists on Career Day.
But something like gynecology mysteriously never seems to come up...
Redditor dialgapalkiagiratina asked:
"Male Gynecologists of Reddit, why did you pursue your job?"
A No-Brainer
"Male OB/GYN in my 30s from Europe here. Several reasons, but maybe the most important and formative experience for me was when after med school I was living in the Horn of Africa for a couple of years."
"I witnessed some soul-crushing things, like obstetric fistulae, young women with advanced cervical cancer that could have been prevented easily, and complicated and traumatic deliveries."
"To put it mildly, women's health leaves much to be desired in a global context."
"I also met there some extremely inspiring and charismatic people, like Edna Adan Ismail and Catherine Hamlin. In general, I'm usually not very easily captivated by people, but these women were just something else with their endless kindness, charisma, and altruism. If on my deathbed I could say that I spent my life trying to do want they did, I could die peacefully."
"So when I, as a young doctor, had the opportunity to get training in the most important medical specialty of all and do my small part in making the world a kinder place for women, I mean, who really would need to think twice?"
- johnnywayfarer
Variety of Tasks
"I get to do a nice mixture of office, surgery, and labor and delivery, which is its own unique thing. I like the busyness and the high intensity. And I like being a part of one of the biggest days of people's lives."
"The hours could be better though; babies have no respect for other people's schedule."
- Justpracticing
Happiest Moments
"I originally didn’t know what I wanted to do when I entered medical school, and if you had asked me then, OBGYN was at the bottom of the list based off of everything negative I had heard."
"During my third-year rotation, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed it. You get to do a little of everything: medicine, surgery, primary care, office procedures and obviously delivering babies which were awesome. On top of that, I lost my Mother during medical school, who was my biggest role model."
"Being able to be there in the room with new moms during their happiest moments just kinda made it all click for me. Don’t regret my decision at all."
- EpeePaul
"Happy Medicine"
"This is what most of my colleagues in the field say. It's the variety and the mix of primary care and pretty awesome procedures. Tends to be more happy medicine."
- PreetHarHarah
The Realities of the Field
"I'm a male gynecologist of six years. Albright working in a hospital outside the US. During our education, we do rotations in every field and gynecology was one of the most diversified fields."
"I'll do deliveries, small operations (D&C), or laparoscopic surgery as well as bigger stuff. Here we even do breast surgery and administer adjuvant chemotherapy ourselves. So I get to do all the fun stuff and it never gets boring."
"Sorry to everyone thinking I'm looking at vulvas 24/7. Most of what I do is talking, to be honest."
- Myd00m
Improved Women's Healthcare
"Male OB/GYN here. Lots of reasons! I am genuinely excited every time I get to be part of bringing a child into the world."
"As a dad to daughters, I feel responsible for making the world a safer place for women to seek healthcare. Women’s health is full of mystery, which isn’t the case in more studied clinical areas."
"Some reasons for this include Women’s health only getting about 1% of biopharma research funding, women being excluded from clinical trials until 1993 (thank you thalidomide scandal), and research animal models almost exclusively being male until 2016."
"There are common woman’s health problems, like endometriosis (10% of women), which we simply do not yet understand. As an academic, I love the research component of my job. The list goes on and on. In short, I think it’s the most rewarding area of medicine and wouldn’t do anything else."
- risenpixel
Fascinated by the Research
"I just finished my Ph.D. and am doing female aging and fertility research at an IVF clinic. It’s wild how much difference in sex has been ignored in tons of research."
"It’s definitely changing, especially with respect to female aging since the ovaries age faster than anything else, and that aging affects a woman’s overall health."
"I got into the field by accident, took a random job in a lab out of college and it ended up being an ovary lab. I wound up loving it and stuck with it for grad school, and here I am starting a career in the field."
"As important as the work is for women’s health and fertility overall, female reproduction is incredibly interesting. I’m biased towards repro in general obviously, but sperm is boring, in my opinion. There’s tons of sperm and you’re always making more."
"But eggs are formed in the embryo and arrested in the cell cycle for decades before being fertilized and making a whole new person. They’re absolutely wild cells. It makes you appreciate how exact our molecular biology is."
- ImJustAverage
Compassionate Care
"It felt like an extremely well-rounded profession. You get to do inpatient and outpatient. You get to do office procedures, laparoscopic surgery, robotic surgery, vaginal surgery, and open surgery. You get to do hands-on ultrasound and not just read it. You get to deliver babies!"
"If you’re doing Gyn Oncology, many will do the chemo and the surgery and not just the surgery like Surg Oncology. If you do MFM, you get to do ultrasound-guided procedures such as fetal blood transfusions and such."
"I feel like this thread wants to focus on the discrepancy between physician and patient sex/gender. We are physicians who take care of patients regardless of their demographics/characteristics, and the profession itself can have high acuity, high points, and low points, you are caring for vulnerable populations, and it is rewarding."
"The other question we always get is, 'Don’t female patients prefer a female physician?' Many do! And that is great! I want patients to see whomever they feel comfortable seeing."
"I ultimately find that for 99% of patients, they want someone who is going to take care of them as a compassionate and empathetic physician, and this transcends what the race/sex/gender/etc of their physician is!"
- The_White_Lotus
Surgical Specialty
"I played football in college. Offensive line. Burly, bearded, white dude. Everyone had me shoehorned for orthopedic surgery or sports medicine. I hated them both."
"Loved being in the operating room, so I knew I had to do a surgical specialty. General surgery rotation was very… ahem…abrasive where I went to school. I had ruled out the other specialties for one reason or another and was left with Urology or gynecology. Urology was too competitive for me, so OB/GYN it was!"
"I also had a very, very good friend four years ahead of me, so she was just about to finish residency when I started. She mentored me and actually took a position as an attending where I matched for residency. I absolutely LOVE what I do! I have a truly amazing team right now between my scribe, my nurse, the surgery techs, and the LDR girls. It’s a great job!"
- CBow63
Treating the Whole Person
"I think it's one of the most generalist areas of medicine still around."
"You dual-specialize (at least where I practice), so you get to do both Obstetrics and gynecology."
"With gynecology, you deal with both medical and surgical issues, things that may have been dismissed for ages by other doctors where you can make a difference, or things where people are truly worried they are not normal when they actually are."
"You deal with sexual health, cancer, chronic pain, and fertility issues, to name a few. A lot of treatments can be medically based, but surgery is occasionally used. Communication is key here, and teaching the patient about the condition is paramount to helping them deal with it."
"I enjoyed palliative medicine as a young doctor, and early pregnancy issues like miscarriage allow me to look after a family unit in a similar way, as does later losses from an obstetric point of view."
"Surgically you can do open surgery, laparoscopic, vaginal, plastics (Urogynecology and general), robotic, etc. Your work can be elective or emergent, and ruptured ectopics/hemorrhaging miscarriages can be the most urgent of urgent, allowing you to save someone's life very quickly."
"With obstetrics, you can deal with any medical issue (with help mind from other specialties) as your population of patients can have pretty much any medical disorders. You get to watch a patient move through their pregnancy, and can even support and deliver them if it is needed."
"The emergency component in Obstetrics is broad and frequent and these are usually easy to deal with. However, the skill comes in communication in these fraught scenarios, which came make or break a patient's experience."
"Overall you deal with young, old, normal, abnormal, cancer, STIs, life, death, grief, happiness, fear, and support."
"A vagina is only part of it, there's a uterus, ovaries, hormones, and a complete, whole person that I treat."
- mzyos
Listening Skills
"To people outside of medicine, this is a common question. And it’s usually included with something along the lines of, 'How can you effectively care for women with women-specific issues if you haven't experienced those yourself?'"
"Seems like a very reasonable question."
"But it’s helpful to remember that most oncologists haven’t gone through cancer treatment. But they’re still well-equipped to guide someone through cancer care. Sure, the patient might benefit from talking with someone that has been through it, but that’s a good role for group therapy or a support class. Doesn’t have to be a role that’s filled by the doctor."
"Most surgeons who fix heart valves, take out gallbladders, remove tumors, etc. have never had heart problems, gall bladder problems, or a tumor. It’s not necessary to have personally experienced those things in order to be excellent at taking care of those things."
"Where we run into trouble is when men dictate the care of women. But doctors shouldn’t be dictating anyone’s care in this day and age. Patients should be provided with the resources to make their own decisions."
"For women seeking care from an OB/GYN, the best equipped OB/GYN is the one that can listen, make a logical plan, advise their patient of their options, and respect their wishes. That OB/GYN could be a man or a woman and be equally good at those things."
- bigwill6709
Emotional Rollercoaster
"Male OB/GYN here, with a post on fetal medicine, sexology, and a fellowship in fertility/reproduction."
"As others have already said, OB/GYN is an extremely diverse field with always a lot going on."
"There's major surgery to be done, then you're off in an office talking about anything, then on an ultrasound machine performing morphology checks, and then a phone rings and you're over there helping bring someone to the world."
"It's all very engaging, emotional, and rewarding."
"But for me the core of it comes directly from its literal meaning, Obstetrics derives from the Latin 'obstare,' which means, 'to be by the side.'"
"It's also an emotional rollercoaster, I get super elated from a birth, and have and will continue to cry with my patients during a miscarriage."
"But, have you ever seen the gaze of a mother to her newborn son for the first time?"
"Have you experienced the pain that comes with the loss of someone who's never ever been born?"
"I get to see the joy of a cancer-free patient, I hear the sweetest sound of a baby's first cry. I even made a blind lady 'see' it's baby during an ultrasound exam once."
"I get to work with amazing and caring people like Kipros Nicolaides and Yves Ville."
"I do good for the people around me. It makes me feel proud and accomplished in every way. What else is there to say?"
- prpg04
Humbling Experience
"I'm a male MD working right now at a family practice here in Sweden, but considered OB/Gyn seriously for a while and worked at a women's clinic for a short time."
"Medically, it's the perfect sweet spot for a person who wants to do it all. You get emergencies and save lives on a daily basis, you get really cool surgery ranging from real emergency life-threatening operations to long cancer operations. You are almost an endocrinologist, a geriatrician, a pediatrician, and a therapist all at once. You get to meet life and death literarily all the time."
"I have seen and assisted a fair amount of deliveries and seen the joy and pain in the parents' eyes. I have held an older patient's hand while consulting and telling them that the cancer is inoperable and that there isn't anything more we can do. It's just a wonderful specialty overall."
- meniscusmilkshake
Would Do It For Free
"Gynae Oncologist for 20 years. Great job that has always had lots of variety and evolved over time. Started with a focus on obstetrics, delivering babies, and experiencing the adrenaline and privilege of being there for that big moment with people."
"Slowly evolved towards gynae and cancer, learning high-end surgery, using a cool kit, dealing with highly challenging scenarios, and constantly learning and developing. This coincided with moving away from the exhausting after-hours work."
"Love my job and if I was independently financially comfortable, I would still do it for free."
- needlenoise
An Alternate Perspective
"I’m a female ID scientist (obviously not the subject of interest here). However, I’ve had a history of poor OB/GYN experiences in my past; a ruthless doctor who snipped my malformed hymen without numbing at 13, ones who completely disregarded my concerns, getting kicked out of the office immediately after IUD."
"All of them were women. Now this isn’t to crap on female OB/GYNs, since some are amazing, just not the ones I’ve found in my area."
"However, I was at the end of my rope and desperately needed someone to help me with what ended up being a ureaplasma infection and finally bit the bullet and saw a male OBGYN who was well-reviewed. He spent 30 minutes listening and getting to know my information. When he needed to examine me, he brought in a female colleague to hold my hand and made sure to give me ample warning before touching or examining."
"Needless to say, I realized that sometimes, people who have no idea what another is going through are the most empathetic."
"Moral of the story, I think sometimes female OBGYNs get into the mindset of 'if I can deal with it, so can you,' therefore it can be better to see male doctors who have no experience and won’t compare themselves to you."
- kahlllee
While there are a lot of stereotypes about what actually goes on during a gynecologist's work day and "what type of guy" would choose this profession, these accounts were really eye-opening and, honestly, heartwarming.