Obstetrics/Gynecology Rotation

Paul Kastell, MD, Chair

The goals of the clinical rotation in obstetrics/gynecology are to provide students with knowledge and experience in managing the normal and abnormal changes that occur during pregnancy, labor, delivery, and the puerperium, and in diagnosing and treating gynecological disorders.

Students become proficient in taking histories from and examining such patients, learning to perform pelvic examinations, including how to pass a speculum and obtain a cervical smear, as well as in attending to their patients in the operating and delivery rooms. Additional student experiences include the observation of labor, delivery of cases, installation of intravenous infusions, recording of partograms, helping with problems of anesthesia, and attendance at special clinics such as pre- and post-natal care, family planning, infertility, and high-risk cases. Students attend conferences, lectures, and teaching rounds. They are expected to follow their patients carefully, read textbooks and literature relevant to their patients’ problems, and pay special attention to public health aspects of reproductive medicine, especially as they relate to maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality, sexually transmitted disease, cancer detection, and human sexuality.