… in Tanzania; Obs and Gyne (pronounced guy-knee) in the UK; and OB/GYN (oh-bee-guy-nn) back home in the US. No matter how you abbreviate it, obstetrics and gynecology is an interesting and interdisciplinary medical field.
Though obstetrics (the medicine of pregnancy and childbirth) and gynecology (the medicine of the female reproductive tract) are two separate fields, they intertwine very closely. Hence, most doctors specialize in both, which gives the OB/GYN field the multifaceted approach I especially enjoy.
In fact, at the age of 13, when I first considered medicine as a career, I wanted to be a gynecologist. I told everyone. The initial interest stemmed from my mother’s explicit descriptions of puberty, birth control, menstruation, childbirth, and pelvic exams; explanations that would have terrorized any pre-teen fascinated me. At 14, I built an anatomical model of the female human body, which still resides in my room back in New York. One could change the breastplate, intestines, and uterus to make the model 7 months pregnant.
The 9 years between those awkward adolescent moments and my first year of medical school have seen multiple changes in both career aspirations and academic interests – including serious time commitments to both HIV/AIDS issues and mental health issues. However, OB/GYN (and women’s health in general) has always held a special place in my heart.
In college, as I developed other medical interests, I’ve looked away from OB/GYN. Mental health is a heavily overlooked issue I desire to pursue, first of all. Also, the medical malpractice insurance for OB doctors is ridiculously expensive in the US (in the range of 150,000 to 300,000 a year), and not many doctors are compensated enough to cover such an egregious expense.
I decided to work in the Obs and Gyn department at KCMC this summer to acknowledge my initial interest – and because it is more difficult to shadow a psychiatrist in a country where everyone speaks Swahili.
Let’s see how it goes!
Though obstetrics (the medicine of pregnancy and childbirth) and gynecology (the medicine of the female reproductive tract) are two separate fields, they intertwine very closely. Hence, most doctors specialize in both, which gives the OB/GYN field the multifaceted approach I especially enjoy.
In fact, at the age of 13, when I first considered medicine as a career, I wanted to be a gynecologist. I told everyone. The initial interest stemmed from my mother’s explicit descriptions of puberty, birth control, menstruation, childbirth, and pelvic exams; explanations that would have terrorized any pre-teen fascinated me. At 14, I built an anatomical model of the female human body, which still resides in my room back in New York. One could change the breastplate, intestines, and uterus to make the model 7 months pregnant.
The 9 years between those awkward adolescent moments and my first year of medical school have seen multiple changes in both career aspirations and academic interests – including serious time commitments to both HIV/AIDS issues and mental health issues. However, OB/GYN (and women’s health in general) has always held a special place in my heart.
In college, as I developed other medical interests, I’ve looked away from OB/GYN. Mental health is a heavily overlooked issue I desire to pursue, first of all. Also, the medical malpractice insurance for OB doctors is ridiculously expensive in the US (in the range of 150,000 to 300,000 a year), and not many doctors are compensated enough to cover such an egregious expense.
I decided to work in the Obs and Gyn department at KCMC this summer to acknowledge my initial interest – and because it is more difficult to shadow a psychiatrist in a country where everyone speaks Swahili.
Let’s see how it goes!
No comments:
Post a Comment