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Do doctors need to be completely desensitised to all sorts of gore and pain?

I mean, I am perfectly fine with looking at surgeries of all sorts and they don't really faze me - but when I see people screaming in pain and cases where surgeries had to be performed without anaesthetic it does make me nauseous. Also I can personally not think of having to incur pain to myself - For example there are times where people have had limbs pinned under heavy objects and they have had to self amputate. Does a prospective doctor need to be able to face all of these events and be able to act in emergencies where tools are limited?

Thank you.
Original post by High Stakes
I mean, I am perfectly fine with looking at surgeries of all sorts and they don't really faze me - but when I see people screaming in pain and cases where surgeries had to be performed without anaesthetic it does make me nauseous. Also I can personally not think of having to incur pain to myself - For example there are times where people have had limbs pinned under heavy objects and they have had to self amputate. Does a prospective doctor need to be able to face all of these events and be able to act in emergencies where tools are limited?

Thank you.


Not that I'm a doctor but I'm sure you do become de-sensitised over time. It's like with anything, if your exposed to it enough slowly it becomes more normal. :smile:
Yes. My friends who've done medicine have had to dissect corpses, look at pictures of horrible injuries etc.

It's probably just my friends are generally weird but they do seem to have gotten more eccentric, have a darker senser of humour etc. I don't mind though :lol:
Not if you're a radiologist cuzz.
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Helenia
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Original post by High Stakes
I mean, I am perfectly fine with looking at surgeries of all sorts and they don't really faze me - but when I see people screaming in pain and cases where surgeries had to be performed without anaesthetic it does make me nauseous. Also I can personally not think of having to incur pain to myself - For example there are times where people have had limbs pinned under heavy objects and they have had to self amputate. Does a prospective doctor need to be able to face all of these events and be able to act in emergencies where tools are limited?

Thank you.

The vast majority of doctors are never going to be in a situation where they have to amputate someone's limb without anaesthetic. You do need to be able to keep a cool head in an emergency, but it's not expected that you can already do this as a 17 year old applicant - you've got 5+ years of medical school and then plenty of years of postgrad training afterwards to get more and more used to it.

I wouldn't say I was desensitised completely, there are still some cases which are just awful for a variety of reasons. But as you get more used to handling emergencies, it gets much less scary.
you still need compassion.
Original post by Helenia
The vast majority of doctors are never going to be in a situation where they have to amputate someone's limb without anaesthetic. You do need to be able to keep a cool head in an emergency, but it's not expected that you can already do this as a 17 year old applicant - you've got 5+ years of medical school and then plenty of years of postgrad training afterwards to get more and more used to it.

I wouldn't say I was desensitised completely, there are still some cases which are just awful for a variety of reasons. But as you get more used to handling emergencies, it gets much less scary.


Thank you. :smile:

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