KANSAS CITY, MO – Fourth-year medical student Rick Hansen ain’t no dummy. He even says it himself: “I ain’t no dummy.” Like most medical students, Hansen dreads performing the pelvic exam. As he nears the end of his med school career, doing an ER rotation no less, he has done the unthinkable and kept his streak of 1,429 straight days of medical school without performing a pelvic exam alive.
“What’s the key to my success?” asked Hansen. “I think with anything in life you really have to take your beliefs to heart. For me, I am passionate about one thing and one thing only: avoiding young females with abdominal pain. That’s the key to The Streak.”
Anyone who has been following Hansen simply refers to his incredible record as “The Streak.” Admittedly, Hansen was a fan of Cal Ripken Jr., who holds the record of playing in 2,632 consecutive MLB games without performing a pelvic exam.
“It didn’t take him long to figure out that most pelvic exams are performed on female patients,” said mentor and primary care physician Lois Garrison. “He was a smart first-year student. When he realized that the differential for females with abdominal pain included pelvic inflammatory disease, ruptured ovarian cyst, ovarian torsion, tubo-ovarian abscess, endometriosis, fibroids, and ectopic pregnancy, he made it his life’s work to avoid all female patients with abdominal pain and thus the pelvic exam. You have to admire his commitment.”
“You think I or a young female patient wants someone like me mucking up in there, trying to figure out what on earth mittelschmerz is?” asked Hansen before he chuckled uncomfortably. “Ummm, I don’t think so.”
Hansen’s ER attendings are impressed, especially in the ER where there is no shortage of female patients with abdominal pain. Hansen will have none of it. “Hansen manages to stick to male patients, that or the little old ladies who couldn’t possibly need a pelvic anyway,” said Philip Towns, one of Hansen’s preceptors. “The few times we forced him to see that young twenty-something with abdominal pain, those young ladies ended up DNR or signing out AMA. He’s remarkable.”
