Idea for the show "Dirty Jobs" - rectal exam volunteer

This quarter we learned the basic physical exam. We are going to learn the advanced/full exam in second year, but I guess they wanted us to get down the foundation of clinical skills as we wrap up our first year of medical school. We learned it under the umbrella of our "Introduction to Clinical Medicine" course which we have been taking all year (and is completely amazing - see previous posts). We start out the physical exam sessions in the lecture hall where we watch a video segment of the part of the exam we will be practicing that day. Then one of our ICM professors goes through a powerpoint about the exam and some of the pathological findings for that part of the exam. Then we break up into groups of 8, 6 or 4 students and a 4th year student med student goes through the exam again and helps us as we practice that day's part of the exam on each other. We have varying levels of skills and different people are easier to perform the exam and find things on than others. So far I am really bad at being able to see the optic disk at the back of the eye. However, we are learning a lot and seem to be doing better each week. At the end of the quarter we will have to perform the complete physical exam (minus the breast and genital parts) on a fellow student in front of a faculty examiner within a 25 minute time limit. I think it might be a bit challenging. We practiced it last week and it took me 45 minutes and I forgot 3 things. Hopefully I will improve before the exam!

We practice all of the exam on each other except for the breast, rectal and genital exams. (whew!) The medical school pays volunteers to come in and allow us clueless med students practice the female breast and male genital and rectal exam on them. For the breast exam I was sort-of nervous and my hand was a little sweaty so during the exam my hand kept sticking to her breast. Awkward! However, the model was really nice and it went much better than I anticipated. Hopefully with a little practice I will be less nervous/sweaty when I do the exam on my first real patient.

The male genital and rectal exam model was really nice. He had been doing this for like 10 years and he was very calming and helped coach us through the process. That physical exam session definitely ruled out a specialty for me though - I now know that I can't do a urology sub specialty. My short stubby fingers aren't long enough to reach around to the top of the prostrate, which is a definite requirement for the practice of urology. Don't worry, I'm not crushed because I never wanted to do urology anyway. It was just an interesting discovery.

Anyway, after this last physical exam lab, it came to me that being a rectal exam volunteer for first year medical students might be a good episode for the show, "Dirty Jobs." Although our volunteer was very calm and extremely nice, it could hardly be comfortable to have your prostrate felt by 10 students in the span of a couple hours. It also could hardly be classified as a "clean job." Just a thought...