Students Allege Florida College Forced Them Undergo Vaginal Probes

[DebJ]

Source: NBC news

Two Florida college students say they were forced to submit to vaginal probes as part of a medical training program and were threatened with blacklisting if they declined.

A federal lawsuit against Florida's Valencia State College claims the school would "browbeat" students who did not consent to the exams, threatening to lower their grades and blacklist them in the medical community.

The plaintiffs, who were not identified, enrolled in Valencia's competitive medical diagnostic sonography program in 2013. The suit says that a second-year student who was nicknamed the "TransVag Queen" explained to them that students should undergo transvaginal ultrasound procedures to become better sonography technicians.

"During orientation, the clients were told that these were voluntary procedures. However, as time went on, it became very clear that they were not voluntary," Christopher Dillingham, a civil rights attorney in Winter Park, Florida, told NBC

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/students-claim-college-forced-them-undergo-vaginal-probes-n361251

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FLORIDA..............

[Faux pas]

1. What's next in the

WAR ON WOMEN?!

[DebJ]

2. It didn't even occur to me until I read your post that male students

aren't subjected to this.....

[kiri]

6. medical students/trainees should have practice

Altho the story seems a bit absurd, surely we do want medical students/trainees to actually have practice doing the procedures they will do on their jobs.

If I am getting treatment for, say, a kidney stone, I would be unhappy if the clinician tells me that "I skipped this part of the training, but I read about it."

[LanternWaste]

11. No doubt there is a vast amount of room in between "I read about kidney stones"

No doubt there is a vast amount of room (including standard practical training, testing, boards, etc.) in between the two extremes of simply "I read about prostate exams" to "I had one as part of my training."

[knightmaar]

12. Of course they should practice ...

... on *willing* participants.

[McCamy Taylor]

14. There are paid "patients" for this. Professionals who are examined and teach medical students

how to do vaginal exam. This school is being cheap if they want to force their own students to do it for free.

[CreekDog]

19. you aren't serious

I mean you think you are. You are trying to sound like you are, but you aren't.

For someone of your expertise in complex fields, it is impossible to believe that you don't understand why asking all of these students to perform these things on each other is ridiculous, much less to require it of them.

I wonder what women would say to such a requirement?

[niyad]

3. and the war on women continues apace

[Xithras]

4. The use of volunteers in medical schools is a regular and accepted thing.

Even for things like vaginal exams, there's nothing unusual about a school asking students to volunteer for procedures. Not only does it give students a real live person to practice on, but it makes the students better doctors and nurses by giving them a patients perspective on the procedure. Generally speaking, this is a good thing.

When you're forcing someone to undergo the procedure, you're crossing a line. Hope the school loses its ass and the students are WELL compensated.

[leftieNanner]

5. Disgusting!

We have state sponsored rape with the forced pre-abortion ultrasounds, and now we have academic rape.

[Omaha Steve]

7. Did they anal probe the males?

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

8. No, that would be pornography.

[BlueJazz]

10. Only when the males take the driving test.

[MosheFeingold]

15. That's actually a good question

I presume the counterpart would be a prostate exam. I don't know if they sonogram that stuff, though.

[Novara]

9. Just when you think you've heard about all the nasty ways to "put women in their place"

They come up with another way to rape us.

Are male students forced to undergo rectal penetration as part of training?

[Plucketeer]

13. They just "packaged it" wrong.

A course description should read "Includes FREE vaginal exam - at no extra cost - unless you opt out"

[marble falls]

16. Oh jeeez ... as a bladder cancer patient I think I even understand a bit how they felt about it.....

This kind of thing as described is some sort of sexual assault.

[blue neen]

17. Read on in the article. It gets worse:

"In some cases, the student would have to sexually 'stimulate' Plaintiffs in order to facilitate inserting the probe into Plaintiffs' vaginas. Plaintiffs experienced discomfort and embarrassment each time they had to endure this forced probing of their sexual organs."

There is something really wrong here.

[AngryAmish]

18. How is this supposed to be trained?

It is important that the techs know what they are doing. On real patients, with an instructor guiding? On women paid by the college? (What would that job posting look like - Do you have unusual vaginal architecture? If so, apply now!)

I could see making them do it on themselves, so they figure out that it is not the most comfortable procedure.