Amy Gelfand
"For some, it is the sight of blood; for others, the smell of stool or vomit. Almost every medical student will at some point in training encounter a particular procedure or biological unpleasantry that simply turns his or her stomach inside out.
"While those outside medicine might assume that we who choose to become physicians are naturally immune to these kinds of vagal triggers, the reality is that modulating our vagal responses is a learned skill, part of becoming a physician."
Amy Gelfand, MD, is a resident in the Department of Pediatrics at UCSF. In this week's issue of
JAMA, she details her experience in encountering her own vagal trigger in "an unexpected nemesis-the lumbar puncture."
Gelfand notes how overcoming such triggers is an important rite of passage for medical students, and that mindfulness about what our individual triggers are-and why some things trigger us more than others-might provide not only important professional insights, but deeply personal ones as well.
