<p>I am currently a junior at a UC, and have wanted to be a trauma surgeon for quite some time now. But, I am starting to rethink going to med school because I dont know if I can cope with someone dying in front of me. I am not really interested in going into dental or another feild. Is this common, how do people get over this fear, or can they?</p>
<p>1) Don’t be a trauma surgeon.</p>
<p>Really the deeper question here is what really bothers you about this fear of having someone die in front of you - is it that death bothers you? That can be overcome usually - gross anatomy and dissecting a cadaver is an important milestone that can go a long way to altering your feelings. If the issue is that death represents a failure to you as a possible trauma surgeon, then you may have an issue with failure (which seems plausible with your stats). That may be a bigger issue, one that could be a lot harder to deal with. </p>
<p>I think you need to examine just what it is that really bothers you.</p>
<p>Many physicians very rarely have to deal with immediate, visible death right in front of them. Primary care, radiology, some types of ambulatory surgery, etc. Trauma, of course, is conceivably the very worst of all specialties for this difficulty. But there’s no sense avoiding medicine as a whole if this is the only problem.</p>
<p>The OP says he is ‘afraid of coping with someone dying in front of him’.</p>
<p>Then how about Pathology? I suppose much of the histopath work is done pretty much detached from patients in determining the cause of disease either for diagnosis before treatment or post-mortum?</p>
<p>Wouldn’t this be a potential area for the OP too?</p>
<p>Way too soon to worry about it. Most docs can go for years, and some for their entire careers, without seeing someone dying in front of them. Some kinds of surgery experience this frequently, but for most other fields it is rare.</p>
<p>People who do confront death remember the times they saved someone’s life, rather than when they lost the battle. </p>
<p>Go ahead to medical school, get some clinical experience as a student, then pick a field in your third or fourth year. You have lots of time.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about it either. It would be abnormal at your stage as a premed to feel confident that you could cope with the death of a patient.
All Med students and interns and residents confront these fears at some point during their long training, and almost all of them evolve to deal with it.
It’s part of the training process. There are some that don’t ever feel comfortable with it, and they would naturally go to fields where they would confront these issues uncommonly. There are many specialties where day to day practice would almost never have to deal with a patient dying suddenly.
Of course trauma surgery is not one of those fields, and at some point in your training you might realize that you are not cut out for that. But it’s way too soon to worry about it.</p>
<p>I have a vivid memory as a third year Med Student rotating through the ER being there when a young patient in his 20’s came in with a massive pulmonary emboli which was a complication of being in a cast for a leg fracture (he developed a deep vein thrombosis in the leg which broke off and went to his pulmonary vessels) Despite heroic efforts for over an hour, he died. It was extremely upsetting, seeing a young, previously healthy patient die like this. The guy was an athlete who had fractured his leg a month ago, had a cast put on, and then without much warning, he was dead.<br>
I remember thinking… I would not be capable of giving the news to the family.
The ER attending told them, and I thought…am I going to feel comfortable doing that at some point? Because at that stage I didn’t feel at all that I would ever be able to deal with that type of situation. As my training went on however, gradually I was exposed to many of these situations with more responsibility and seniority. And I became comfortable with dealing with pretty much all of the range of things a Physician has to deal with. Remember, it’s not always about coping with sudden death. Sometimes it’s about explaining risks and benefits, or about the success of a surgery, or the inevitable progression of an incurable disease, and the lack of any effective treatment. Coping with all of these requires experience and training. You’re not expected to be able to do it as a premed.</p>
<p>Well, one thing you can count on for sure: as a doctor, more than once you are going to be faced with “someone dying in front of you”!!</p>
<p>I was not sure how i could handle “dead people” myself. I heard some students would faint, etc, etc…Then, I just signed up for an autopsy as part of a Premed Club in High School. I saw the whole thing and found it interesting but certainly would not make of Pathology my career. That was my first sign that I would be ok with the practical stuff like blood, body parts and organs, etc.</p>
<p>That’s was my begining…</p>