I'm a transplanted American living in England, and was shocked to discover that pap smears are conducted without gowns, drapes or any sort of covering at all. They just ask you to remove the bottom half of your clothes and go for it! This appears to be a UK-wide thing, at least according to the nurse I spoke to, who had never used gowns in her 40-year career. Apparently they're not considered necessary by the National Health Service. To be fair, the standard of health care I’ve received here has been excellent, and my last pap was by far the best I’ve had. But give me a scratchy smock over half-nudity any day, and forget about the actors and puppies!

I'm sorry you'll die the painful death of an early, could-have-been-detected cancer. Your family and friends will miss you. Your "ick factor" at taking personal responsibility for knowing your own body will be cold comfort in an early grave.

Your call.

Unicorns, Elvis impersonators, and dogs playing poker.

...there damned well better be a Monica Bellucci poster up there too.

If you find gynecological exams humiliating, you either are seeing that fertility doctor who inseminated his patients with his own sperm (possible but unlikely), and should act accordingly, or you are projecting your own shame about your genitals onto something utterly banal. I've been getting them myself for now half my life (17/34 years) from a variety of practitioners (male/female/old/young/MD/NP/PA/CNM/student) and have never felt humiliated or embarrassed. I've felt worse when the clerk ripped me for being five minutes late.

Those of us who have had babies rarely can get bothered about this. I mean, once you've given birth and breastfed, you're just over anyone seeing anything. But I think your projection of your own shame onto the rest of the world leads to things like complaints about breastfeeding at Fred Meyer (in the Broadsheet archives).

Or, perhaps, you had a sexual abuse/assault experience in your history that informs your experience with exams in a negative way. I am sympathetic, but still the solution lies in your hands and yours alone. You may consider receiving therapy, and informing your practitioner of your history. The person should probably ask, but hey, they've got 15 minutes, help them help you.

Physically uncomfortable I'll grant you, but so is the dentist, and also the optometrist, as in holding your dilated eye open and unblinking in front of a penetrating light (and you don't get to look at any nice pictures of any sort there). Another thing to do on top of a very busy schedule? Yes. But humiliating? That's a feeling that no one else can make you feel. Please take responsibility accordingly.

I'm an internist and also end up doing my share of Pap smears. I also try to make the effort to engage my patients in conversation while I'm doing it. Not everyone wants to hear about what's going on "down there", but we can at least talk about the weather or something to pass the time.

I do take issue with the whole notion "if men had to get Pap smears, they would've invented something easier". First of all, if men are supposedly in charge of inventing such things, wouldn't they have found some replacement for the prostate exam? Secondly, the only way to really look for potential cancers is by looking at tissue. Unfortunately for we women, the tissue of interest is in a spot that can't be examined any other way. The only way a cervical cancer can be detected with a CT or ultrasound is when it's much too advanced to do anything about it.

I get my Pap smear done every year and, yes, it's uncomfortable and somewhat embarassing. However, I'm willing to trade a little modesty for the ability to prevent a condition that could potentially kill me. Don't forget that there are places in the world where women are dying of cervical cancer and other conditions because social mores prevent them from having a proper gynecological exam.

-Grungie

Hey....

I'm a gynecologist and many of us DO try to engage patients in conversation and explain what we are doing and why (unless the patient says "don't tell me what you're doing down there!" which happens on occasion). As a matter of fact, I just finished doing pap tests for a number of women. All of us agree, the exam is no fun but in reality, it only takes a few minutes of actual exam time and it's the reason cervical cancer is so rare (and it's better than a colonoscopy!). We have nature scenes on our acoustic tiles; the pictures were put there after numerous patient requests. In better news, new guidelines for pap smear recommendations will be coming out this fall and they may not need to be done as often (yay!!).

although for us guys over 50 there's the famous DRE - which is, granted, a fairly quick business even if slightly messy. But the place I'd like to see something on the ceiling is my dentist's office. There's a place where you can't talk, it usually takes a while, and acoustical tile is just so boring.

Just sayin'. Why else would they think all the women they treat would want to look at George Clooney or any other man for that matter? Lesbians need pap smears, too. How about a poster for them? Or hey-- better yet, how about NOT in any way sexualizing a medical exam and instead, as catnmus (great post, btw!) suggested, actually engage the patient in conversation?

Or if one must have a pic of something, make it a giant ice cream sundae-- that's what my gyno has on his ceiling. :)

...we would have had "non-invasive" female-exam techniques (similar to MRIs or CAT scans) invented, perfected and popularized DECADES AGO!!!

As long as gyno exams are as undignified and humiliating as they are today, I'll still refuse to have one. Pap smears be damned. Oh, and I adore George Clooney, but that just ain't enough...