Thursday, January 29, 2009

Quick Overview of My Intro to Urology Clinic


The first clue about the maturity level of your typical urologist, can be gained from seeing, on the door of the doctors' lounge, a labelled picture of the handsome animal featured above. These urologists strike me as the future incarnations of Kumar, the guy from that White Castle movie.

In contrast to the bawdy behavior of the urologists, one of our patients, Mr. Smith, was the quintessential "gentleman." He thanked us for taking the time to see him. Whenever he referred to any portion of the male anatomy, he said "Sorry, to the ladies, I don't mean to be impolite talking about these things." He was fully aware of his prior condition, and had followed his previous doctors' advice. The juxtaposition becomes especially absurd, however, when you notice the patient's right leg that is cuffed to the bed, and the two police officers sitting in the corner, mindlessly surfing the web, Berreta 92s intimidating from their holsters. The patient has scars on his back and legs, all from multiple previous gun shot wounds. Based on the manners of most of the patients who head over from County Jail, I can only assume that Cotillion is scheduled between recreation and lockdown.

No kid grows up dreaming of becoming a urologist. Even medical students tend to not think of it (I want to work with urine!) The thing is, however, unlike the "stereotypical" image of a surgeon, who might be seen angry and annoyed, the urologists love to make jokes, have fun, and really get along with their patients, all the while doing a cool fusion of medicine and surgery. The two attendings whom my group assisted today are volunteers, who spend one day a week away from their private clinics, just to teach us lowly Second-Year-Know-Nothing-Medical Students. They showed us the procedures for inserting a Foley catheter, doing sonogram assisted prostate biopsies, and performing a cystoscopy. They were all so eager and excited to teach us whatever they could, and we were all having a blast. It's kind of like an old boy's club, but one where young boys and all girls are invited, too.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

[Warning: weak, low-level joke.]

Given the name of the animal, the urologist wouldn't specialise in Diphallia, would he?

Now I really must get on with other things...

l33t MD said...

During my urology rotation, most urologists seemed embarrased, apologetic almost, of their profession. Bawd was not displayed at any point. I find that kinda weird. Some of the more awesome surgeries, and surgeons, I observed were urologic ones.

vishnuprasath said...

The main advantage of urology is that it can be used for both diagnostic and therapeutic (treatment) purposes. Hence endoscopy has become a mandatory investigation in Gastroenterology.