A Degree In Medicine

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate April 2001

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Shondra Gravley's observation I researched the profession of medicine because I have always wanted to be a pediatrician. I observed a pediatrician named Dr. Kennedy and I know her from the doctor's office that I was admitted to in the past. Dr. Kennedy took me on hospital rounds to about 5 different hospitals and the things I saw were very interesting. At one of the hospitals, I had the pleasure of viewing a circumcision, which was very interesting. I had never seen anything like that before. First, they gave the baby boy some painkillers and then they clamped him down and put a blanket over the rest of his body. They took a scalpel and cut all the way around the head of the penis and then put this little plastic cap over it. Then they took scissors and cut the rest of the skin off. That was interesting and the mom handled it really well.

I saw a lot of sad cases where the newborn baby was in a glass box with tubes coming out because it was really sick. Some of the children had no parents to come visit them and they just sat in their cribs and cried for hours. Dr. Kennedy showed me what they do with the paper work. A doctor has to read over the entire chart of their patient before they can even look at them. The doctor also must talk to the patient about their rights and tell the mothers about how often and when to breast-feed their baby and how to change them. It is the physician's responsibility to be sure the mother can properly care for that child before they are taken out of the hospital. I don't think that I would like to work in a...