Local third-year medical student was overjoyed when she saw the schedule for her OB/GYN clerkship orientation included an hour in the simulation center practicing how to deliver babies. Student doctor Perry Neum groans, “I’ve wanted to do OB/GYN ever since I finished my last rotation in pediatrics – I had to tell peds I want to go into peds, obviously – and I was so excited to actually simulate delivering a fake baby from the lifelike, mannequins!”
As part of the rotation’s orientation exercises, students received several hours of lecture on topics such as how to scrub in (because “you learned it incorrectly on your general surgery rotation”), why OB is more surgery than surgery, and how best to position the bucket when delivering afterbirth so as not to soil the only pair of scrubs the department has authorized you to pull from the floor’s scrub machine.
Following the morning of lectures, students were corralled to the simulation center for hands-on experience delivering mannequins. “But when we got there, Dr. Pluhsenta spent the entire session reviewing the importance of history taking and then pimped the group for relevant questions to ask a new patient,” says Perry.
Sources close to Perry confirm her dismay. Housemate and frenemy currently on her surgery rotation, Tyler Spence relates how irritated Perry was when he saw her leaving the hospital at 3PM: “Whatever happened in the sim center must have really gotten her going because she was still fuming even though she got to go home 6 hours before my resident even thinks about letting me leave!”
Dr. Pluhsenta declined to comment and the clerkship director was unavailable by pager, cell phone, or email – despite the “open door policy” bolded and underlined in the course syllabus.
