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.
Gynecologists And Urologists Share Their Most Embarrassing Patient Stories
Some doctors have the kinds of specialties that might make others cringe - but those doctors who specialize in reproductive and excretory systems are literal life savers! That doesn't mean they're immune to the sorts of embarrassing moments that happen to us all.
For them, though, a lot of those moments are totally commonplace. What could be the most humiliating medical moment of your life is just "Tuesday morning" for them - and in a way, that makes them even bigger heroes in our eyes.
One Reddit user asked:
Surprisingly, not a lot of actual medical professionals spoke up at first. We suppose they're so used to not talking about a patient's personal issues with anyone but them (thank you HIPPA!) that it took a while to get things going. Having said that, plenty of patients were willing to talk about their own mortifying experiences.
So the responses you're about to read are a mixed bag, some from medical professionals, some from patients, some from family members - all awkward.
I Remember When...
GiphyI'm a male nurse. I was working a rehab unit one time and had to give a younger gentleman a suppository due to no bowel movement for 4 days. I saw him a couple years later in a public place and he shouts out to me "Hey dude remember when your finger was in my butt!"
I wasn't sure what to say, it was a little awkward. So I just did this snapping finger gun back to him. That ended up being just as awkward. If not more.
The First Dad Joke
When my wife was giving birth our Gyno told her to give a big push. She did and proceeded to pee all over the doctors face (she was wearing a protective mask for just such an occasion so no harm no foul). Being terrified as I was that my wife was in the process of delivering our firstborn, I helpfully offered up "Don't worry, some people pay good money for that." I still hate myself for it.
- hasentj
Going The Distance
Surgical tech, I was in the OR prepping the patient for a bladder sling. Patient wasn't all the way under and while I was helping the surgeon, we heard coughing and what sounded like water falling. We turned and every time the patient coughed, urine shot out about two feet. We measured it, she had good distance. It wasn't awkward as much as interesting.
Talking About The Weather
In nursing school they taught us about how to insert a urinary catheter in men. There's this lidocaine lube that helps make an otherwise uncomfortable procedure considerably less uncomfortable. The catch is the you have to insert a syringe (not a needle) into the tip of the penis and inject lidocaine lube into the urethra and then hold the penis with your thumb over the urethra for five minutes. So like just hang out, holding a penis talking about the weather for five minutes.
- Laederol
Caw! Caw!
GiphyAcquaintance was a 17-year-old male getting a physical from a female doctor. She was checking for a hernia, so grabbed his testicles and asked him to cough. In his nervousness, he misheard. He turned his head and did his best crow imitation: "Caw! Caw!"
The Knot
Urology nurse here-
We had a teenager come in with his mother (we were not a pediatric urology office but saw teens on special occasions with a doctors OK)...
.. kid was masturbating with a cell phone charger and got it stuck in his bladder. We went in with cystoscopy to take a look and potentially remove it in office with no sedation. We enter his bladder and there is a huge KNOT in the cord. Kids acting like this is an everyday NBD kinda thing. Moms just sitting there horrified. Obviously he had to go to the OR due to the giant knot tied in the cord.
That was the weirdest.
Hand Delivery And Google
Yes!!! This is going to get buried, but I worked in a urologist's office for a long time. It's pretty wild and I have lots of stories (my poor boyfriend), but here are two of my favorites:
- Patients have to bring in semen samples post vasectomy to make sure there was no issue with the procedure so we can declare them sterile. We give them two sterile cups, paper bags, and instructions. One patient called a took the "just bring it in, hand deliver it!" directions too literally and tried to shove a handful of semen through the office window. I still have so many questions.
- Teenager comes in, thinks he might be sterile. We tell him to go home and bring us back a sample. He doesn't understand. I explain to him, professionally, that he should ejaculate into the cup we provided. He asks how. I think he's messing with me and just answer "masturbation." He asks what that is, and if his mom can help him. I don't know to this day if he was messing with me, but I'm pretty sure I just told him to Google it.
Squats
While getting a prostate exam for a physical, I asked if he could tell I'd been doing squats.
Without missing a beat he said yes.
Wheely Stool
At a gyno appointment when I was 19, I was all situated on the table with my legs up, fully exposed. The doctor was adjusting her wheely stool, it slipped, she lost her balance and went headfirst into my spread eagle crotch. Reflexively, I pulled my knees together, essentially putting her in a headlock with my thighs. It all happened in about 3 seconds but felt like an eternity of unending embarrassment and shock.
A Third Ball
I was getting snipped and they had me on some valium. Had a great conversation with the doc. We talked about vacations, homebrew, cars, etc. When he was done he said, "I've had such a nice chat with you I almost wish you had a third ball." Kinda made me tear up a bit.
- Dugdstew
"Man, This One's A Stinker!"
Last time I was at the gyno, my doctor was getting ready to start the exam while her assistant was opening one of the disposable tools. The assistant was having some issues and as soon as I got in the stirrups, the assistant said loudly, 'Man, this one's a stinker!'. I looked at her with my jaw dropped and it clicked a few seconds later that she was talking about the difficulty of opening the tool, and not my vagina. It was the most fun I've ever had at the lady doctor.
Almost Sad
Patient here; For my first gyno visit I was pretty anxious and clumsy about the whole deal. After the nurse sat me down on the chair and made me spread my legs eagle style, my doctor walked in with 4 students in row, around same age as me.
So, eventually there was 6 people in the room, looking at my vagina in interest. At one point my doctor even said "Damn I wanted to show you some lumps or tumors today but looks like she is okay... I'm almost sad.'
- purinnie
Zero Jollies
GiphyI'm primary care. Older man teasing me after his prostate exam that I "took his anal virginity".
These both really offend me. I am NOT doing anything that is supposed to be pleasurable or having sex or taking anyone's virginity during exams. I am a doctor doing my job. I get ZERO jollies from it. If you think I did, you should report me. These jokes make me feel abused as the doctor quite frankly. I wish I had told the patients at the time that these comments are not appreciated.