I can't really imagine being an obstetrician and enjoying a good quality of life at this point. I'm exhausted just as a med student: working overnight, getting up at 430am to go to the hospital, getting home at 8pm, middle of the night deliveries, obstetric emergencies, and so on.
Some people might like the idea of being an ob/gyn, but you have to like labour, vaginal tears, cervical lacerations, peeing and pooping patients in labour (watch for splash damage), expensive overhead, low salary in proportion to hours worked, foetuses with poor prognosis, foetal demise, IVF not working, people declining genetic testing for serious diseases, and so on. It's a demanding field but if you are ok with the above, consider ob/gyn.
I enjoyed my ObGyne rotation since our residents are fun to work with, so it makes things easier. :) But when we were exposed to a government hospital for 2 weeks for our ObGyne rotation, I started having the same sentiments you have.
ReplyDeleteJust curious, are lawsuits related to ObGyne cases common in your hospital? :O
Thanks for your comment!
ReplyDeleteYour question helps me illustrate the disparities in American health care. In the hospitals funded by the city, there are a lot of patients who are not able to afford the costs of a lawyer in instances of malpractice. I think these patients tend to have a higher threshold when it comes to thinking about lawsuits, so to speak, compared to patients with private insurance and more money.
Here in the US, many patients have a "have it your way" mentality when it comes to health care: they set their own rules and demand their own treatments, and call in their own consults sometimes I've been in the room a lot of times with a physician who has to try to convince a patient that all these extra tests the patient wants to order are of little benefit and there's a risk of overdiagnosis.
I think things get particularly scarier with an unborn child, since I think a lot of people tend to have a mentality that babies just "pop out."
I think working labour and delivery is like driving a car at 150 miles per hour on a race track, everything happens so fast and there's little room for error as a result. I can't quote you on how common lawsuits are in my hospital setting in the OB/GYN world, but I'll try to find an article for you. Thanks for reading!