Ob-Gyn Week 1 - Thoughts on Clinic Week

The patient population at the clinic was very diverse ranging from Caucasian patients to Hispanic patients to Immigrant patients from West Africa and Central America. Patients presented for a variety of reasons some of which are:
- care during their pregnancy weeks (antepartum care)
- general clinic visits for infections, contraception, bleeding
- annual visits
- 6 week postpartum visit

I spent an afternoon at the Colposcopy Clinic. This was an interesting afternoon. Wikipedia says that colposcopy "is a medical diagnostic procedure to examine an illuminated, magnified view of the cervix and the tissues of the vagina and vulva." This procedure is often done if a pap smear comes back abnormal (There is a long algorithm that is used to determine if a woman needs a colposcopy or not). 3 out of the 4 women who were undergoing the procedure did not want a male medical student in the room - which was a little disappointing but understandable. After reading about the procedure and looking at atlas pictures for most of the afternoon, I was glad I got to see one procedure being done. It was relatively simple and short (and normal which was excellent news for our patient!).

In a nutshell, I loved my clinic week. I enjoyed providing primary care to patients and was very impressed with the preventive health opportunities that were created and acted upon in the clinic. Pregnant women come to hospitals and clinic often for care, and this gives them access to the health care system. It is our responsibility as physicians to take advantage of this - and the staff at the clinic definitely did that!